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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         23rd July 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
  32 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
  33 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
  34 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
  35 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
  36 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
  37 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
  38 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
  39 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
  40 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
  41 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
  42 the translation show this very well:</p>
  43
  44 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
  45
  46 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
  47 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
  48 project pages and the
  49 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
  50 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
  51 and HTML version available in the
  52 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
  53 directory</a>.</p>
  54
  55 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
  56 you find any.</p>
  57
  58       </div>
  59       <div class="tags">
  60
  61
  62         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
  63
  64
  65       </div>
  66     </div>
  67     <div class="padding"></div>
  68
  69     <div class="entry">
  70       <div class="title">
  71         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
  72       </div>
  73       <div class="date">
  74         17th June 2014
  75       </div>
  76       <div class="body">
  77         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
  78 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
  79 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
  80 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
  81 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
  82
  83 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
  84 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
  85 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
  86 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
  87 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
  88 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
  89 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
  90 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
  91 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
  92 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
  93 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
  94 goals.</p>
  95
  96 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
  97 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
  98 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
  99 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
 100 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
 101 chapters together into one large web page (aka
 102 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
 103 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
 104 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
 105 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
 106 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
 107 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
 108 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
 109 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
 110 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
 111 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
 112 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
 113 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
 114 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
 115 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
 116 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
 117 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
 118 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
 119 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
 120
 121 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
 122 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
 123 track the English original.  For this we use the
 124 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
 125 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
 126 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
 127 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
 128 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
 129 files), which the translations update with the native language
 130 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
 131 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
 132 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
 133 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
 134 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
 135 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
 136 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
 137 of the documentation.</p>
 138
 139 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
 140 recommend using
 141 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
 142 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
 143 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
 144 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
 145 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
 146 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
 147 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
 148 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
 149
 150 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
 151 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
 152 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
 153 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
 154 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
 155 translated images by storing translated versions in
 156 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
 157 package maintainers know more.</p>
 158
 159 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
 160 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
 161 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
 162 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
 163 PDF version</a> or the
 164 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
 165 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
 166 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
 167
 168 <p>To learn more, check out
 169 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
 170 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
 171 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
 172 manual on the wiki</a> and
 173 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
 174 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
 175
 176       </div>
 177       <div class="tags">
 178
 179
 180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 181
 182
 183       </div>
 184     </div>
 185     <div class="padding"></div>
 186
 187     <div class="entry">
 188       <div class="title">
 189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="date">
 192         29th May 2014
 193       </div>
 194       <div class="body">
 195         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
 196 in my car, connected to
 197 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
 198 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
 199 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
 200 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
 201 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
 202 such car computer.</p>
 203
 204 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
 205
 206 <ul>
 207
 208  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
 209
 210  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
 211    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
 212    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
 213    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
 214    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
 215
 216  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
 217    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
 218    route.</li>
 219
 220  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
 221
 222  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
 223    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
 224    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
 225    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
 226    connection do not work.</li>
 227
 228  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
 229    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
 230
 231  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
 232    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
 233
 234  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
 235    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
 236
 237 </ul>
 238
 239 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
 240 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
 241
 242       </div>
 243       <div class="tags">
 244
 245
 246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 247
 248
 249       </div>
 250     </div>
 251     <div class="padding"></div>
 252
 253     <div class="entry">
 254       <div class="title">
 255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
 256       </div>
 257       <div class="date">
 258         29th April 2014
 259       </div>
 260       <div class="body">
 261         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
 262 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
 263 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
 264 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
 265 newer AVM2 format - see
 266 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
 267 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
 268 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
 269 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
 270 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
 271 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
 272 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
 273 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
 274 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
 275 sites do not work yet.</p>
 276
 277 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
 278 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
 279 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
 280 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
 281 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
 282 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
 283 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
 284 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
 285 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
 286 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
 287 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
 288
 289 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
 290 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
 291 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
 292 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
 293 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
 294 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
 295 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
 296
 297 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
 298 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
 299 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
 300 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
 301 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
 302
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="tags">
 305
 306
 307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 308
 309
 310       </div>
 311     </div>
 312     <div class="padding"></div>
 313
 314     <div class="entry">
 315       <div class="title">
 316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
 317       </div>
 318       <div class="date">
 319         23rd April 2014
 320       </div>
 321       <div class="body">
 322         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 323 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 324 So I implemented one, using
 325 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
 326 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 327 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 328 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
 329 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 330 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
 331
 332 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 333 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 334 packages to install.  The first part is in
 335 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
 336 this:</p>
 337
 338 <p><blockquote><pre>
 339 Task: isenkram
 340 Section: hardware
 341 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 342  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 343  proposed.
 344 Test-new-install: mark show
 345 Relevance: 8
 346 Packages: for-current-hardware
 347 </pre></blockquote></p>
 348
 349 <p>The second part is in
 350 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
 351 this:</p>
 352
 353 <p><blockquote><pre>
 354 #!/bin/sh
 355 #
 356 (
 357     isenkram-lookup
 358     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 359 ) | sort -u
 360 </pre></blockquote></p>
 361
 362 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 363 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 364 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
 365 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 366 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 367 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
 368
 369 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 370 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 371 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 372 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 373 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 374 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
 375 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
 376 the python-apt code (bug
 377 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
 378 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 379 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 380 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 381 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 382 unstable today.</p>
 383
 384 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
 385 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
 386 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
 387 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
 388 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
 389 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
 390 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
 391 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
 392 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
 393
 394 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
 395 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
 396 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
 397 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
 398 package.  See also
 399 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
 400 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
 401 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
 402 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
 403
 404       </div>
 405       <div class="tags">
 406
 407
 408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 409
 410
 411       </div>
 412     </div>
 413     <div class="padding"></div>
 414
 415     <div class="entry">
 416       <div class="title">
 417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
 418       </div>
 419       <div class="date">
 420         15th April 2014
 421       </div>
 422       <div class="body">
 423         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 424 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
 425 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
 426 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
 427 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
 428 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
 429
 430 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
 431 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
 432 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
 433 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
 434 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
 435 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
 436 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
 437
 438 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
 439 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
 440 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
 441 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
 442 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
 443 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
 444 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
 445 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
 446 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
 447 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
 448 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
 449 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
 450
 451 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
 452 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
 453 become root:</p>
 454
 455 <p><pre>
 456 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 457   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 458   u-boot-tools
 459 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 460   freedom-maker
 461 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 462 </pre></p>
 463
 464 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 465 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
 466 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
 467 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
 468 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
 469 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
 470 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
 471 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
 472
 473 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 474 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 475 the preseed values:</p>
 476
 477 <p><pre>
 478 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 479 </pre></p>
 480
 481 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
 482 it still work.</p>
 483
 484 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
 485 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
 486 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
 487 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
 488 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
 489 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
 490 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
 491
 492 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 493 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 494 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 495 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 496 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 497 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 498
 499       </div>
 500       <div class="tags">
 501
 502
 503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 504
 505
 506       </div>
 507     </div>
 508     <div class="padding"></div>
 509
 510     <div class="entry">
 511       <div class="title">
 512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
 513       </div>
 514       <div class="date">
 515          9th April 2014
 516       </div>
 517       <div class="body">
 518         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
 519 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
 520 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
 521 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
 522 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
 523 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
 524 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
 525 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
 526 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
 527 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
 528 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
 529 have looked at a system called
 530 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
 531 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
 532
 533 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
 534 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
 535 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
 536 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
 537 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
 538 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
 539 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
 540 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
 541 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
 542 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
 543 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
 544 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
 545 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
 546
 547 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
 548 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
 549 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
 550 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
 551 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
 552 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
 553 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
 554 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
 555 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
 556 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
 557 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
 558 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
 559 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
 560 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
 561 account.</p>
 562
 563 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
 564 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
 565 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
 566 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
 567 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
 568 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
 569 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
 570
 571 <p><blockquote><pre>
 572 [s3c]
 573 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 574 backend-login: API-login
 575 backend-password: API-password
 576 fs-passphrase: local-password
 577 </pre></blockquote></p>
 578
 579 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
 580 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
 581 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
 582 details and password to create it:</p>
 583
 584 <p><blockquote><pre>
 585 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
 586 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 587   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 588 Enter backend login:
 589 Enter backend password:
 590 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
 591 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
 592 Enter encryption password:
 593 Confirm encryption password:
 594 Generating random encryption key...
 595 Creating metadata tables...
 596 Dumping metadata...
 597 ..objects..
 598 ..blocks..
 599 ..inodes..
 600 ..inode_blocks..
 601 ..symlink_targets..
 602 ..names..
 603 ..contents..
 604 ..ext_attributes..
 605 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 606 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
 607 # </pre></blockquote></p>
 608
 609 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
 610
 611 <p><blockquote><pre>
 612 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 613   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 614 Using 4 upload threads.
 615 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
 616 Reading metadata...
 617 ..objects..
 618 ..blocks..
 619 ..inodes..
 620 ..inode_blocks..
 621 ..symlink_targets..
 622 ..names..
 623 ..contents..
 624 ..ext_attributes..
 625 Mounting filesystem...
 626 # df -h /s3ql
 627 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 628 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
 629 #
 630 </pre></blockquote></p>
 631
 632 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
 633 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
 634 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
 635 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
 636 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
 637 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
 638
 639 <p><blockquote><pre>
 640 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
 641 #
 642 </pre></blockquote></p>
 643
 644 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
 645 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
 646 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
 647 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
 648 file system:</p>
 649
 650 <p><blockquote><pre>
 651 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 652 Using cached metadata.
 653 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
 654 Checking DB integrity...
 655 Creating temporary extra indices...
 656 Checking lost+found...
 657 Checking cached objects...
 658 Checking names (refcounts)...
 659 Checking contents (names)...
 660 Checking contents (inodes)...
 661 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
 662 Checking objects (reference counts)...
 663 Checking objects (backend)...
 664 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
 665 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
 666 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
 667 Checking objects (sizes)...
 668 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
 669 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
 670 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
 671 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
 672 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
 673 Checking inodes (sizes)...
 674 Checking extended attributes (names)...
 675 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
 676 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
 677 Checking directory reachability...
 678 Checking unix conventions...
 679 Checking referential integrity...
 680 Dropping temporary indices...
 681 Backing up old metadata...
 682 Dumping metadata...
 683 ..objects..
 684 ..blocks..
 685 ..inodes..
 686 ..inode_blocks..
 687 ..symlink_targets..
 688 ..names..
 689 ..contents..
 690 ..ext_attributes..
 691 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 692 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
 693 #
 694 </pre></blockquote></p>
 695
 696 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
 697 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
 698 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
 699 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
 700 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
 701 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
 702 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
 703 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
 704 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
 705 working set.</p>
 706
 707 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
 708 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
 709 busy:</p>
 710
 711 <p><blockquote><pre>
 712 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 713   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 714 Using 8 upload threads.
 715 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
 716 #
 717 </pre></blockquote></p>
 718
 719 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
 720 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
 721 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
 722 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
 723 s3qlctrl:
 724
 725 <p><blockquote><pre>
 726 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
 727 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
 728 #
 729 </pre></blockquote></p>
 730
 731 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
 732 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
 733 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
 734 a report:</p>
 735
 736 <p><blockquote><pre>
 737 # s3qlstat /s3ql
 738 Directory entries:    9141
 739 Inodes:               9143
 740 Data blocks:          8851
 741 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
 742 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
 743 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
 744 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
 745 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
 746 #
 747 </pre></blockquote></p>
 748
 749 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
 750 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
 751 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
 752 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
 753 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
 754 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
 755 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
 756 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
 757 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
 758 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
 759 best.</p>
 760
 761 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
 762 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
 763 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
 764 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
 765 poster is titled
 766 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
 767 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
 768 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
 769 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
 770 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
 771
 772 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
 773 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
 774 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
 775 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
 776 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
 777 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
 778 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
 779 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
 780
 781 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
 782 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
 783 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
 784 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
 785 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
 786 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
 787 only read from it.</p>
 788
 789 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 790 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 791 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 792
 793       </div>
 794       <div class="tags">
 795
 796
 797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 798
 799
 800       </div>
 801     </div>
 802     <div class="padding"></div>
 803
 804     <div class="entry">
 805       <div class="title">
 806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
 807       </div>
 808       <div class="date">
 809          1st April 2014
 810       </div>
 811       <div class="body">
 812         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
 813 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
 814 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
 815 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
 816 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
 817 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
 818 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
 819 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
 820 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
 821 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
 822 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
 823 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
 824 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
 825
 826 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
 827 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
 828 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
 829 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
 830 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
 831 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
 832 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
 833 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
 834 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
 835 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
 836 Linux.</p>
 837
 838 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
 839 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
 840 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
 841 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
 842 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
 843 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
 844 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
 845 Windows before metro).</p>
 846
 847 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
 848 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
 849 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
 850 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
 851 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
 852 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
 853 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
 854 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
 855 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
 856 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
 857 old Windows binaries, check it out by
 858 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
 859 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
 860 image.</p>
 861
 862       </div>
 863       <div class="tags">
 864
 865
 866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
 867
 868
 869       </div>
 870     </div>
 871     <div class="padding"></div>
 872
 873     <div class="entry">
 874       <div class="title">
 875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
 876       </div>
 877       <div class="date">
 878         30th March 2014
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="body">
 881         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 882 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
 883 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
 884 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
 885 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
 886
 887 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 888
 889 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
 890 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
 891 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
 892 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
 893 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
 894
 895 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
 896 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
 897 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
 898
 899 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
 900 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
 901 hunger.</p>
 902
 903 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 904 project?</strong></p>
 905
 906 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
 907 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
 908 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
 909 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
 910 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
 911 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
 912 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
 913 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
 914 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
 915 running.  I just loved it.</p>
 916
 917 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 918 Edu?</strong></p>
 919
 920 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
 921 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
 922 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
 923 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
 924 be made of steel.</p>
 925
 926 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 927 Edu?</strong></p>
 928
 929 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
 930
 931 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
 932 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
 933 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
 934 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
 935 or dropped.</p>
 936
 937 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
 938 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
 939 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
 940 discourage many people too.</p>
 941
 942 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 943
 944 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
 945 Virtualbox.</p>
 946
 947
 948 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 949 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 950
 951 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
 952 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
 953 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
 954 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
 955 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
 956 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
 957 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
 958 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
 959 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
 960
 961       </div>
 962       <div class="tags">
 963
 964
 965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
 966
 967
 968       </div>
 969     </div>
 970     <div class="padding"></div>
 971
 972     <div class="entry">
 973       <div class="title">
 974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
 975       </div>
 976       <div class="date">
 977         25th March 2014
 978       </div>
 979       <div class="body">
 980         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
 981 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
 982 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
 983 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
 984 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
 985 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
 986 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
 987 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
 988 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
 989
 990 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
 991 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
 992 looked a given way.  Such
 993 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
 994 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
 995 called a
 996 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
 997 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
 998 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
 999 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
1000 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
1001 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
1002 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
1003 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
1004 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
1005 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
1006 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
1007 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
1008 There are several commercial services around providing such
1009 timestamping.  A quick search for
1010 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
1011 service</a>" pointed me to at least
1012 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
1013 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
1014 Vadis</a>,
1015 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
1016 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
1017 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
1018 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
1019
1020 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
1021 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
1022 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
1023 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
1024 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
1025 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
1026 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
1027 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
1028 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
1029 Greifswald.</p>
1030
1031 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
1032 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
1033 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
1034 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
1035 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
1036
1037 <p><blockquote><pre>
1038 #!/bin/sh
1039 set -e
1040 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
1041 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
1042 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
1043 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
1044 cafile=chain.txt
1045 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
1046     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
1047 fi
1048 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
1049     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
1050 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
1051 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
1052 base64 < "$resfile"
1053 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
1054 </pre></blockquote></p>
1055
1056 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
1057 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
1058 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
1059 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
1060 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
1061 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
1062 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
1063 changed.</p>
1064
1065 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
1066 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
1067 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
1068 to set up?</p>
1069
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="tags">
1072
1073
1074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1075
1076
1077       </div>
1078     </div>
1079     <div class="padding"></div>
1080
1081     <div class="entry">
1082       <div class="title">
1083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
1084       </div>
1085       <div class="date">
1086         21st March 2014
1087       </div>
1088       <div class="body">
1089         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
1090 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
1091 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
1092 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
1093 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
1094 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
1095 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
1096
1097 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
1098 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
1099 tried using
1100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
1101 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
1102 and program
1103 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
1104 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
1105 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
1106 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
1107 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
1108 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
1109 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
1110 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
1111 this method.</p>
1112
1113 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
1114 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
1115 problem is
1116 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
1117 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
1118 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
1119 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
1120 DVD structures, as the python library
1121 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
1122 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
1123 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
1124 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
1125 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
1126 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
1127
1128 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
1129 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
1130
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="tags">
1133
1134
1135         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1136
1137
1138       </div>
1139     </div>
1140     <div class="padding"></div>
1141
1142     <div class="entry">
1143       <div class="title">
1144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
1145       </div>
1146       <div class="date">
1147         14th March 2014
1148       </div>
1149       <div class="body">
1150         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1151 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1152 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1153 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1154 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1155 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1156 release (0.2).</p>
1157
1158 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1159 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1160 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1161 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1162 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1163 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1164 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1165 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1166 and build using
1167 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
1168 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1169
1170 <pre>
1171 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1172   freedom-maker
1173 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1174   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1175   u-boot-tools
1176 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1177 </pre>
1178
1179 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1180 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1181 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
1182 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1183 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1184 kpartx call.</p>
1185
1186 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1187 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1188 the preseed values:</p>
1189
1190 <pre>
1191 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1192 </pre>
1193
1194 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1195 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
1196 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1197 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1198 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1199 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
1200
1201 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1202 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1203 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1204 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1205 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1206 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1207
1208       </div>
1209       <div class="tags">
1210
1211
1212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1213
1214
1215       </div>
1216     </div>
1217     <div class="padding"></div>
1218
1219     <div class="entry">
1220       <div class="title">
1221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1222       </div>
1223       <div class="date">
1224         12th March 2014
1225       </div>
1226       <div class="body">
1227         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
1228 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
1229 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
1230 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
1231 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
1232 document this better when one of the customers of
1233 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
1234 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
1235 get this working are the following:</p>
1236
1237 <p><ol>
1238
1239 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
1240 example host here.</li>
1241
1242 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
1243 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
1244
1245 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
1246 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
1247
1248 </ol></p>
1249
1250 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
1251 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
1252 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
1253 started).</p>
1254
1255 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
1256 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
1257
1258 <p><blockquote><pre>
1259 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
1260 Export list for nas-server:
1261 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
1262 root@tjener:~#
1263 </pre></blockquote></p>
1264
1265 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
1266 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
1267 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
1268 NFS access.</p>
1269
1270 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
1271 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
1272 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
1273
1274 <p><blockquote><pre>
1275 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1276 </pre></blockquote></p>
1277
1278 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
1279 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
1280 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
1281 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
1282
1283 <p><blockquote><pre>
1284 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1285 objectClass: automount
1286 cn: nas-server
1287 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1288
1289 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1290 objectClass: top
1291 objectClass: automountMap
1292 ou: auto.nas-server
1293
1294 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1295 objectClass: automount
1296 cn: /
1297 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
1298 </pre></blockquote></p>
1299
1300 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
1301 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
1302 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
1303
1304 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
1305 the storage server directly by just visiting the
1306 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
1307 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
1308
1309       </div>
1310       <div class="tags">
1311
1312
1313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
1314
1315
1316       </div>
1317     </div>
1318     <div class="padding"></div>
1319
1320     <div class="entry">
1321       <div class="title">
1322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="date">
1325         22nd February 2014
1326       </div>
1327       <div class="body">
1328         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1329 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1330 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1331 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1332 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1333 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1334 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1335 proper home since then.</p>
1336
1337 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1338 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1339 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1340 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1341 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1342
1343 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1344 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1345 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1346 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1347 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1348 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1349 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1350 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1351 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1352
1353       </div>
1354       <div class="tags">
1355
1356
1357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1358
1359
1360       </div>
1361     </div>
1362     <div class="padding"></div>
1363
1364     <div class="entry">
1365       <div class="title">
1366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1367       </div>
1368       <div class="date">
1369          3rd February 2014
1370       </div>
1371       <div class="body">
1372         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1373 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1374 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1375 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1376 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1377 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1378 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1379 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
1380 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1381
1382 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1383 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1384 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1385 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1386 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1387 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
1388
1389 <p><blockquote><pre>
1390 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1391 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
1392 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
1393 dhclient /dev/eth0
1394 </pre></blockquote></p>
1395
1396 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1397 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1398 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
1399
1400 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1401 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1402 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1403 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1404 side.</p>
1405
1406 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1407 stuff:</p>
1408
1409 <p><blockquote><pre>
1410 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1411 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1412 EOF
1413 apt-get update
1414 apt-get dist-upgrade
1415 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1416     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1417 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1418 </pre></blockquote></p>
1419
1420 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1421 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
1422 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1423 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1424 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1425 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1426 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1427 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1428 ssh instead.
1429
1430 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1431 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1432 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1433 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1434 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1435 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
1436
1437 <p><blockquote><pre>
1438 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1439 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1440 EOF
1441 </pre></blockquote></p>
1442
1443 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1444 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1445 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1446 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
1447
1448 <p><blockquote><pre>
1449 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
1450 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1451 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
1452 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
1453 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
1454 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1455 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1456 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1457 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1458 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1459 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1460 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1461 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1462 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
1463 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
1464 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1465 #
1466 </pre></blockquote></p>
1467
1468 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1469 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1470 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
1471 command line stuff.<p>
1472
1473       </div>
1474       <div class="tags">
1475
1476
1477         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>.
1478
1479
1480       </div>
1481     </div>
1482     <div class="padding"></div>
1483
1484     <div class="entry">
1485       <div class="title">
1486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
1487       </div>
1488       <div class="date">
1489         29th January 2014
1490       </div>
1491       <div class="body">
1492         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
1493 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
1494 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
1495 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
1496 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
1497 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
1498 investigated in
1499 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
1500 from December 2013, in the article
1501 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
1502 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
1503 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
1504 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
1505 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
1506 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
1507 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
1508 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
1509
1510 <p><blockquote>
1511 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
1512 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
1513 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
1514 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
1515 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
1516 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
1517 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
1518 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
1519 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
1520 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
1521 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
1522 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
1523
1524 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
1525 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
1526 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
1527 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
1528 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
1529 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
1530 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
1531 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
1532 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
1533 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
1534 </blockquote><p>
1535
1536 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
1537 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
1538 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
1539 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
1540 summarized like this:</p>
1541
1542 <p><blockquote>
1543 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
1544 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
1545 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
1546 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
1547 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
1548 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
1549 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
1550 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
1551 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
1552 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
1553 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
1554 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
1555 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
1556 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
1557 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
1558 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
1559 </blockquote></p>
1560
1561 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
1562 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
1563 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
1564 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
1565
1566 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1567 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1568 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1569
1570       </div>
1571       <div class="tags">
1572
1573
1574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1575
1576
1577       </div>
1578     </div>
1579     <div class="padding"></div>
1580
1581     <div class="entry">
1582       <div class="title">
1583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
1584       </div>
1585       <div class="date">
1586         14th January 2014
1587       </div>
1588       <div class="body">
1589         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
1590 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1591 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1592 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1593 the source.  The company behind it provide
1594 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
1595 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
1596 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1597 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1598 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
1599 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
1600 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
1601 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1602 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
1603 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
1604 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
1605 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
1606 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1607 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1608 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1609 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
1610 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
1611 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
1612 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
1613
1614 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
1615
1616 <ul>
1617
1618   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
1619   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
1620   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
1621
1622 </ul>
1623
1624 <p>You can
1625 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1626 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1627 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1628 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1629 include a test suite check.</p>
1630
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="tags">
1633
1634
1635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1636
1637
1638       </div>
1639     </div>
1640     <div class="padding"></div>
1641
1642     <div class="entry">
1643       <div class="title">
1644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
1645       </div>
1646       <div class="date">
1647         25th December 2013
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="body">
1650         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1651 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
1652 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
1653 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
1654 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
1655 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
1656 George</a>.</p>
1657
1658 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
1659
1660 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1661
1662 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
1663 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
1664 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
1665 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
1666 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
1667 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
1668
1669 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
1670 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
1671 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
1672 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
1673 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
1674 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
1675 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
1676 to help building another school's informational education concept from
1677 scratch.</p>
1678
1679 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
1680 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
1681 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
1682
1683 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
1684 and cycling.</p>
1685
1686 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1687 project?</strong></p>
1688
1689 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
1690 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
1691 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
1692 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
1693 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
1694 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
1695
1696 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
1697 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
1698 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
1699 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
1700 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
1701 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
1702 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
1703 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
1704 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
1705
1706 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
1707 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
1708 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
1709 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
1710
1711 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1712 Edu?</strong></p>
1713
1714 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
1715 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
1716 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
1717 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
1718 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
1719 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
1720 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
1721 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
1722 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
1723 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
1724 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
1725 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
1726 that it rocks!</p>
1727
1728 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
1729 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
1730 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
1731 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
1732 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
1733 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
1734 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
1735
1736 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1737 Edu?</strong></p>
1738
1739 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
1740 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
1741 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
1742 can list a few points about that:</p>
1743
1744 <ul>
1745
1746  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
1747  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
1748  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
1749
1750 </ul>
1751
1752 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
1753
1754 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1755
1756 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
1757 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
1758 year.</p>
1759
1760 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
1761 run text tools. I use
1762 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
1763 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
1764 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
1765 based full-featured student management software with the two),
1766 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
1767 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
1768 coloured world called the WWW, I use
1769 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
1770 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
1771 e-mail.</p>
1772
1773 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
1774 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
1775 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
1776 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
1777 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
1778 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
1779 Facebook now ;).</p>
1780
1781 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1782 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1783
1784 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
1785 side is what I have experienced.</p>
1786
1787 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
1788 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
1789 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
1790 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
1791 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
1792 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
1793 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
1794 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
1795 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
1796 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
1797 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
1798 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
1799 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
1800 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
1801 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
1802 plain criminal.</p>
1803
1804 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
1805 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
1806 founded an association named
1807 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
1808 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
1809 area of free and open source software, for example the
1810 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
1811 Teckids and are the youth programme of
1812 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
1813 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
1814 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
1815 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
1816 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
1817 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
1818
1819 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
1820 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
1821 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
1822 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
1823 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
1824 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
1825 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
1826 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
1827 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
1828 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
1829 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
1830 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
1831
1832 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
1833 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
1834 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
1835 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
1836
1837 <!--
1838
1839 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
1840
1841 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
1842 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
1843
1844  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
1845    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
1846    of the decision makers above;
1847  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
1848    knowledge about free software
1849
1850 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
1851
1852 -->
1853
1854       </div>
1855       <div class="tags">
1856
1857
1858         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1859
1860
1861       </div>
1862     </div>
1863     <div class="padding"></div>
1864
1865     <div class="entry">
1866       <div class="title">
1867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
1868       </div>
1869       <div class="date">
1870          6th December 2013
1871       </div>
1872       <div class="body">
1873         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
1874 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1875 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
1876 had a new school administrator show up on
1877 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
1878 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
1879 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
1880 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
1881 Germany a few years ago.</p>
1882
1883 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1884
1885 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
1886 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
1887 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
1888 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
1889
1890 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
1891 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
1892 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
1893 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
1894 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
1895 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
1896 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
1897 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
1898 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
1899
1900 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1901 project?</strong></p>
1902
1903 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
1904 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
1905 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
1906 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
1907
1908 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1909 Edu?</strong></p>
1910
1911 <ul>
1912   <li>Quick installation,</li>
1913   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
1914   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
1915   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
1916     single company,</li>
1917   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
1918     experience and problem solutions.</li>
1919 </ul>
1920
1921 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1922 Edu?</strong></p>
1923
1924 <ul>
1925   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
1926   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
1927   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
1928   working again reliably.
1929
1930   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
1931   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
1932   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
1933   as their base.
1934
1935   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
1936   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
1937   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
1938   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
1939   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
1940   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
1941
1942   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
1943   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
1944   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
1945   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
1946   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
1947   schemes.</li>
1948
1949   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
1950   compared to Debian.</li>
1951
1952 </ul>
1953
1954 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
1955 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
1956 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
1957 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
1958
1959 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1960
1961 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
1962 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
1963 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
1964 programming languages for teaching.</p>
1965
1966 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1967 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1968
1969 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
1970
1971 <ul>
1972
1973   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
1974     teaching and learning.</li>
1975
1976   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
1977     home, and at their working place without running into license or
1978     conversion problems.</li>
1979
1980   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
1981     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
1982     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
1983     science, not products.</li>
1984
1985   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
1986     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
1987
1988 </ul>
1989
1990       </div>
1991       <div class="tags">
1992
1993
1994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1995
1996
1997       </div>
1998     </div>
1999     <div class="padding"></div>
2000
2001     <div class="entry">
2002       <div class="title">
2003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
2004       </div>
2005       <div class="date">
2006         30th November 2013
2007       </div>
2008       <div class="body">
2009         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
2010 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
2011 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
2012 experiment with interesting network technology, the
2013 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
2014 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
2015 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
2016 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
2017 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
2018 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
2019 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
2020 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
2021 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
2022 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
2023 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
2024 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
2025 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
2026 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
2027 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
2028 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
2029
2030       </div>
2031       <div class="tags">
2032
2033
2034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2035
2036
2037       </div>
2038     </div>
2039     <div class="padding"></div>
2040
2041     <div class="entry">
2042       <div class="title">
2043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="date">
2046         24th November 2013
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="body">
2049         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2050 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2051 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2052 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2053 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2054 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2055 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2056 is working on.  I checked the
2057 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2058 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2059 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2060 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2061 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2062 These are the release notes:</p>
2063
2064 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2065
2066 <ul>
2067
2068   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2069    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2070    up.</li>
2071
2072   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2073
2074   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2075    Matthias Klose.</li>
2076
2077   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2078    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2079
2080   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2081    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2082    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2083
2084 </ul>
2085
2086 <p>You can
2087 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2088 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2089 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2090 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2091 include a testsuite check.</p>
2092
2093       </div>
2094       <div class="tags">
2095
2096
2097         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2098
2099
2100       </div>
2101     </div>
2102     <div class="padding"></div>
2103
2104     <div class="entry">
2105       <div class="title">
2106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
2107       </div>
2108       <div class="date">
2109         21st November 2013
2110       </div>
2111       <div class="body">
2112         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
2113 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
2114 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
2115 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
2116 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
2117 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
2118 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
2119 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
2120 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
2121 TED talk
2122 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
2123 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
2124 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
2125
2126 <blockquote>
2127
2128 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
2129 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
2130 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
2131 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
2132 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
2133 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
2134 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
2135 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
2136 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
2137 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
2138 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
2139
2140 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
2141 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
2142 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
2143
2144 </blockquote>
2145
2146 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
2147 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
2148 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
2149 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
2150 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
2151 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
2152 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
2153 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
2154 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
2155
2156       </div>
2157       <div class="tags">
2158
2159
2160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2161
2162
2163       </div>
2164     </div>
2165     <div class="padding"></div>
2166
2167     <div class="entry">
2168       <div class="title">
2169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
2170       </div>
2171       <div class="date">
2172         13th November 2013
2173       </div>
2174       <div class="body">
2175         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
2176 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
2177 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
2178 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
2179 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
2180 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
2181 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
2182 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
2183 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
2184 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
2185 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
2186 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
2187 right away. :)</p>
2188
2189       </div>
2190       <div class="tags">
2191
2192
2193         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2194
2195
2196       </div>
2197     </div>
2198     <div class="padding"></div>
2199
2200     <div class="entry">
2201       <div class="title">
2202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
2203       </div>
2204       <div class="date">
2205         10th November 2013
2206       </div>
2207       <div class="body">
2208         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
2209 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
2210 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
2211 MR3040 as a mesh node using
2212 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
2213
2214 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
2215 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
2216 and downloaded
2217 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
2218 recommended firmware image</a>
2219 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
2220 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
2221 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
2222 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
2223 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
2224
2225 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
2226 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
2227 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
2228 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
2229 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
2230 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
2231 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
2232 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
2233 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
2234 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
2235 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
2236 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
2237 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
2238
2239 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
2240 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
2241 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
2242 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
2243 them:</p>
2244
2245 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
2246
2247 <pre>
2248
2249 config interface 'loopback'
2250         option ifname 'lo'
2251         option proto 'static'
2252         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
2253         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
2254
2255 config globals 'globals'
2256         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
2257
2258 config interface 'lan'
2259         option ifname 'eth0'
2260         option type 'bridge'
2261         option proto 'dhcp'
2262         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
2263         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
2264         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
2265         option ip6assign '60'
2266
2267 config interface 'mesh'
2268         option ifname 'adhoc0'
2269         option mtu '1528'
2270         option proto 'batadv'
2271         option mesh 'bat0'
2272 </pre>
2273
2274 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
2275 <pre>
2276
2277 config wifi-device 'radio0'
2278         option type 'mac80211'
2279         option channel '11'
2280         option hwmode '11ng'
2281         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
2282         option htmode 'HT20'
2283         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
2284         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
2285         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
2286         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
2287         option disabled '0'
2288
2289 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
2290         option device 'radio0'
2291         option ifname 'adhoc0'
2292         option network 'mesh'
2293         option encryption 'none'
2294         option mode 'adhoc'
2295         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
2296         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
2297 </pre>
2298 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
2299 <pre>
2300
2301 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
2302         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
2303         option 'aggregated_ogms'
2304         option 'ap_isolation'
2305         option 'bonding'
2306         option 'fragmentation'
2307         option 'gw_bandwidth'
2308         option 'gw_mode'
2309         option 'gw_sel_class'
2310         option 'log_level'
2311         option 'orig_interval'
2312         option 'vis_mode'
2313         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
2314         option 'distributed_arp_table'
2315         option 'network_coding'
2316         option 'hop_penalty'
2317
2318 # yet another batX instance
2319 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
2320 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
2321 </pre>
2322
2323 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
2324 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
2325 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
2326
2327       </div>
2328       <div class="tags">
2329
2330
2331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2332
2333
2334       </div>
2335     </div>
2336     <div class="padding"></div>
2337
2338     <div class="entry">
2339       <div class="title">
2340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
2341       </div>
2342       <div class="date">
2343          2nd November 2013
2344       </div>
2345       <div class="body">
2346         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2347 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2348 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2349 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2350 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2351
2352 <p><pre>
2353 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2354 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2355 # Provides:          rsyslog
2356 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2357 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2358 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2359 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2360 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2361 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2362 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2363 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2364 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2365 ### END INIT INFO
2366 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2367 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2368 </pre></p>
2369
2370 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2371 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2372 info/comments.</p>
2373
2374 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2375 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2376
2377 <p><pre>
2378 #!/bin/sh
2379
2380 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2381 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2382 # and status_of_proc is working.
2383 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2384
2385 #
2386 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2387
2388 #
2389 do_start()
2390 {
2391         # Return
2392         #   0 if daemon has been started
2393         #   1 if daemon was already running
2394         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2395         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2396                 || return 1
2397         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2398                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2399                 || return 2
2400         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2401         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2402         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2403 }
2404
2405 #
2406 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2407 #
2408 do_stop()
2409 {
2410         # Return
2411         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2412         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2413         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2414         #   other if a failure occurred
2415         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2416         RETVAL="$?"
2417         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2418         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2419         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2420         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2421         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2422         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2423         # sleep for some time.
2424         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2425         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2426         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2427         rm -f $PIDFILE
2428         return "$RETVAL"
2429 }
2430
2431 #
2432 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2433 #
2434 do_reload() {
2435         #
2436         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2437         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2438         # then implement that here.
2439         #
2440         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2441         return 0
2442 }
2443
2444 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2445 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2446 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2447 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2448     script="$1"
2449     shift
2450     . $script
2451 else
2452     exit 0
2453 fi
2454
2455 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2456 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2457
2458 # Exit if the package is not installed
2459 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2460
2461 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2462 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2463
2464 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2465 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2466
2467 case "$1" in
2468   start)
2469         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2470         do_start
2471         case "$?" in
2472                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2473                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2474         esac
2475         ;;
2476   stop)
2477         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2478         do_stop
2479         case "$?" in
2480                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2481                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2482         esac
2483         ;;
2484   status)
2485         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2486         ;;
2487   #reload|force-reload)
2488         #
2489         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2490         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2491         #
2492         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2493         #do_reload
2494         #log_end_msg $?
2495         #;;
2496   restart|force-reload)
2497         #
2498         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2499         # 'force-reload' alias
2500         #
2501         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2502         do_stop
2503         case "$?" in
2504           0|1)
2505                 do_start
2506                 case "$?" in
2507                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2508                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2509                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2510                 esac
2511                 ;;
2512           *)
2513                 # Failed to stop
2514                 log_end_msg 1
2515                 ;;
2516         esac
2517         ;;
2518   *)
2519         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2520         exit 3
2521         ;;
2522 esac
2523
2524 :
2525 </pre></p>
2526
2527 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2528 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2529 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2530 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2531
2532 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2533 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2534 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2535 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2536 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2537
2538       </div>
2539       <div class="tags">
2540
2541
2542         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>.
2543
2544
2545       </div>
2546     </div>
2547     <div class="padding"></div>
2548
2549     <div class="entry">
2550       <div class="title">
2551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
2552       </div>
2553       <div class="date">
2554          1st November 2013
2555       </div>
2556       <div class="body">
2557         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2558 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2559 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2560 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2561 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2562 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2563 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2564 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2565 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2566 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2567 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2568 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2569
2570 <p>The source is now available from
2571 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
2572
2573       </div>
2574       <div class="tags">
2575
2576
2577         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>.
2578
2579
2580       </div>
2581     </div>
2582     <div class="padding"></div>
2583
2584     <div class="entry">
2585       <div class="title">
2586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
2587       </div>
2588       <div class="date">
2589         27th October 2013
2590       </div>
2591       <div class="body">
2592         <p>The
2593 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2594 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2595 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2596 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2597 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2598 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2599 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2600 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2601 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2602 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2603 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2604 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2605
2606 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2607 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2608 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2609 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2610 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2611 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2612 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2613 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2614 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2615 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2616 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2617 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2618 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2619 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2620 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2621 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2622 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2623 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2624 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2625 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2626 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2627 available from
2628 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2629 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2630
2631 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2632 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2633 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2634 list:</p>
2635
2636 <p><pre>
2637 #!/bin/sh
2638 set -e # Exit on first error
2639 rootdir="$1"
2640 cd "$rootdir"
2641 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2642 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2643 EOF
2644 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2645 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2646 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2647     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2648 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2649 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2650 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2651 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2652 </pre></p>
2653
2654 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2655 to build the image:</p>
2656
2657 <pre>
2658 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2659     --variant minbase \
2660     --arch armel \
2661     --distribution jessie \
2662     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2663     --image test.img \
2664     --size 600M \
2665     --bootsize 64M \
2666     --boottype vfat \
2667     --log-level debug \
2668     --verbose \
2669     --no-kernel \
2670     --no-extlinux \
2671     --root-password raspberry \
2672     --hostname raspberrypi \
2673     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2674     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2675     --package netbase \
2676     --package git-core \
2677     --package binutils \
2678     --package ca-certificates \
2679     --package wget \
2680     --package kmod
2681 </pre></p>
2682
2683 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2684 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2685 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2686 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2687 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2688 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2689 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2690
2691 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2692 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2693 build dependency list.</p>
2694
2695 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2696 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2697 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2698 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2699
2700       </div>
2701       <div class="tags">
2702
2703
2704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
2705
2706
2707       </div>
2708     </div>
2709     <div class="padding"></div>
2710
2711     <div class="entry">
2712       <div class="title">
2713         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
2714       </div>
2715       <div class="date">
2716         21st October 2013
2717       </div>
2718       <div class="body">
2719         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
2720 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
2721 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
2722 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
2723 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
2724 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
2725 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
2726 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
2727
2728 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
2729 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
2730 instead, I started playing with a
2731 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
2732 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
2733 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
2734 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
2735 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
2736 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
2737 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
2738 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
2739 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
2740 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
2741 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
2742 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
2743 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
2744 every client on the local network.</p>
2745
2746 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
2747 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
2748 and a script
2749 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
2750 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
2751 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
2752 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
2753 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
2754 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
2755 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
2756 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
2757 support.</p>
2758
2759 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
2760 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
2761
2762 <p><pre>
2763 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
2764     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
2765 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
2766 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
2767 %
2768 </pre></p>
2769
2770 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
2771 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
2772 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
2773 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
2774 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
2775 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
2776
2777 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
2778 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
2779 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
2780
2781 <p><table>
2782
2783 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
2784 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
2785 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
2786 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
2787 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
2788 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
2789
2790 </table></p>
2791
2792 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
2793 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
2794 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
2795 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
2796 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
2797 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
2798 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
2799
2800       </div>
2801       <div class="tags">
2802
2803
2804         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2805
2806
2807       </div>
2808     </div>
2809     <div class="padding"></div>
2810
2811     <div class="entry">
2812       <div class="title">
2813         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
2814       </div>
2815       <div class="date">
2816         19th October 2013
2817       </div>
2818       <div class="body">
2819         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
2820 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
2821 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
2822 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
2823 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
2824 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
2825 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
2826 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
2827
2828       </div>
2829       <div class="tags">
2830
2831
2832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2833
2834
2835       </div>
2836     </div>
2837     <div class="padding"></div>
2838
2839     <div class="entry">
2840       <div class="title">
2841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
2842       </div>
2843       <div class="date">
2844         15th October 2013
2845       </div>
2846       <div class="body">
2847         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2848 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2849 these. :)</p>
2850
2851 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2852 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2853 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2854 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2855 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2856 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2857 hope you will to. :)</p>
2858
2859 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2860 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2861 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2862 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2863 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2864
2865 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2866 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2867 statement under the heading
2868 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2869 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2870 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2871 too.</p>
2872
2873       </div>
2874       <div class="tags">
2875
2876
2877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2878
2879
2880       </div>
2881     </div>
2882     <div class="padding"></div>
2883
2884     <div class="entry">
2885       <div class="title">
2886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
2887       </div>
2888       <div class="date">
2889         11th October 2013
2890       </div>
2891       <div class="body">
2892         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
2893 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
2894 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
2895 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
2896 successful examples like
2897 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
2898 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
2899 (see
2900 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
2901 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
2902 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
2903 can be seen from their
2904 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
2905 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
2906 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
2907 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
2908 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
2909
2910 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
2911 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
2912 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
2913 my recent involvement in
2914 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
2915 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
2916 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
2917 when possible, given that most communication between people are
2918 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
2919 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
2920 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
2921 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
2922 important over the years.</p>
2923
2924 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
2925 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
2926 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
2927 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
2928 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
2929 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
2930 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
2931 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
2932 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
2933 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
2934 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
2935 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
2936 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
2937 speakers about this talk (from
2938 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
2939
2940 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2941
2942 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
2943 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
2944 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
2945 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
2946 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
2947 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
2948 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
2949 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
2950 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
2951 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
2952 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
2953 that project (from
2954 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
2955
2956 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2957
2958 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
2959 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
2960 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
2961 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
2962 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
2963 based community mesh networks.</p>
2964
2965 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
2966 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
2967 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
2968 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
2969 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
2970 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
2971 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
2972 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
2973 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
2974
2975 <p><table>
2976 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
2977 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
2978 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
2979 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
2980 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
2981 </table></p>
2982
2983 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
2984 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
2985 VillageTelco about
2986 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
2987 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
2988 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
2989 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
2990 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
2991 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
2992
2993 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
2994 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
2995 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
2996 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
2997
2998 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
2999 us on IRC, either channel
3000 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
3001 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
3002 irc.freenode.net.</p>
3003
3004 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
3005 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
3006 and Innovation called
3007 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
3008 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
3009 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
3010 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
3011 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
3012 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
3013 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
3014 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
3015
3016 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
3017 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
3018 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
3019 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
3020 mesh system.</p>
3021
3022       </div>
3023       <div class="tags">
3024
3025
3026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3027
3028
3029       </div>
3030     </div>
3031     <div class="padding"></div>
3032
3033     <div class="entry">
3034       <div class="title">
3035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
3036       </div>
3037       <div class="date">
3038          8th October 2013
3039       </div>
3040       <div class="body">
3041         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
3042 Salvador had published a
3043 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
3044 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
3045 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
3046 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
3047 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
3048 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
3049 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
3050 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
3051 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
3052 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
3053 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
3054 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
3055 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
3056 computers without hard drives by installing one central
3057 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
3058
3059 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
3060
3061 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3062
3063 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
3064 me know. :)</p>
3065
3066       </div>
3067       <div class="tags">
3068
3069
3070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3071
3072
3073       </div>
3074     </div>
3075     <div class="padding"></div>
3076
3077     <div class="entry">
3078       <div class="title">
3079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
3080       </div>
3081       <div class="date">
3082         29th September 2013
3083       </div>
3084       <div class="body">
3085         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
3086 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
3087 complete announcement text can be found at
3088 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
3089 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
3090
3091 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
3092 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
3093 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
3094 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
3095
3096       </div>
3097       <div class="tags">
3098
3099
3100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3101
3102
3103       </div>
3104     </div>
3105     <div class="padding"></div>
3106
3107     <div class="entry">
3108       <div class="title">
3109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3110       </div>
3111       <div class="date">
3112         27th September 2013
3113       </div>
3114       <div class="body">
3115         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3116 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3117 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3118 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3119
3120 <ul>
3121
3122 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3123 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3124
3125 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3126 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3127
3128 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3129 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3130 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3131 (Youtube)</li>
3132
3133 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3134 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3135
3136 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3137 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3138
3139 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3140 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3141 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3142
3143 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3144 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3145 (Youtube)</li>
3146
3147 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3148 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3149
3150 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3151 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3152
3153 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3154 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3155 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3156
3157 </ul>
3158
3159 <p>A larger list is available from
3160 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3161 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3162
3163 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3164 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3165 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3166 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3167 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3168 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3169 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3170 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3171 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3172 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3173 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3174
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="tags">
3177
3178
3179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3180
3181
3182       </div>
3183     </div>
3184     <div class="padding"></div>
3185
3186     <div class="entry">
3187       <div class="title">
3188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
3189       </div>
3190       <div class="date">
3191         16th September 2013
3192       </div>
3193       <div class="body">
3194         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3195 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
3196
3197 <blockquote>
3198 <p>Hi,</p>
3199
3200 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
3201 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3202 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
3203
3204 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
3205 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
3206 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
3207 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
3208
3209 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
3210 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
3211
3212 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
3213 compared to beta1:</p>
3214
3215 <ul>
3216
3217 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
3218 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
3219 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
3220 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
3221 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
3222 main server.</li>
3223 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
3224 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
3225 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
3226 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
3227 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
3228
3229 </ul>
3230
3231 <p>Where to get it:</p>
3232
3233 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3234
3235 <ul>
3236 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
3237 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
3238 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
3239 </ul>
3240
3241 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
3242
3243 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
3244 <ul>
3245 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
3246 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
3247 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
3248 </ul>
3249
3250 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
3251
3252 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
3253 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
3254 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
3255 as the other isos.</p>
3256
3257 <p>How to report bugs</p>
3258
3259 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
3260 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3261
3262
3263 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
3264
3265 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3266 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3267 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
3268 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3269 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3270 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3271 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
3272 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
3273 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
3274 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
3275 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
3276 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
3277 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3278
3279 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3280 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3281 Squeeze release.</p>
3282
3283 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
3284
3285 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3286 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3287 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
3288 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
3289 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
3290 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
3291 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
3292 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
3293 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
3294 directory.</p>
3295
3296
3297 <p>cheers,
3298 <br>        Holger</p>
3299 </blockquote>
3300
3301       </div>
3302       <div class="tags">
3303
3304
3305         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3306
3307
3308       </div>
3309     </div>
3310     <div class="padding"></div>
3311
3312     <div class="entry">
3313       <div class="title">
3314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
3315       </div>
3316       <div class="date">
3317         10th September 2013
3318       </div>
3319       <div class="body">
3320         <p>I was introduced to the
3321 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3322 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3323 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3324 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3325 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3326 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3327 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3328 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3329
3330 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3331 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3332 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3333 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3334 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3335
3336 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3337 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3338 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3339 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3340 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3341 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3342 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3343 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3344 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3345 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3346 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3347 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3348 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3349 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3350 missing in Debian).</p>
3351
3352 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3353 scripts
3354 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3355 and a administrative web interface
3356 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3357 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3358 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3359 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3360 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3361 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3362 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3363 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3364 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3365 this is really working yet, see
3366 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3367 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3368 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3369 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3370 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3371 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3372 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3373
3374 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3375 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3376 at.</p>
3377
3378 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3379
3380 <ol>
3381
3382 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3383 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3384 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3385 to the Debian installer:<p>
3386 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3387
3388 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3389 install on.</li>
3390
3391 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3392 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3393
3394 </ol>
3395
3396 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3397
3398 <ol>
3399
3400 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3401 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3402 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3403 <pre>
3404 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3405 </pre></li>
3406 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3407 <pre>
3408 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3409    apt-key add -
3410 apt-get update
3411 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3412 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3413 </pre></li>
3414 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3415
3416 </ol>
3417
3418 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3419 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3420 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3421 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3422 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3423
3424 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3425 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3426 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3427 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3428
3429 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3430 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3431 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3432 irc.debian.org and the
3433 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3434 mailing list</a>.</p>
3435
3436 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3437 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3438 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3439 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3440 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3441 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3442
3443       </div>
3444       <div class="tags">
3445
3446
3447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3448
3449
3450       </div>
3451     </div>
3452     <div class="padding"></div>
3453
3454     <div class="entry">
3455       <div class="title">
3456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3457       </div>
3458       <div class="date">
3459         22nd August 2013
3460       </div>
3461       <div class="body">
3462         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3463 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
3464 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
3465
3466 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
3467
3468 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3469 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3470
3471 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3472
3473 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3474 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3475 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3476 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3477 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3478 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3479 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3480 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
3481 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3482 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3483 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3484 desktop contains
3485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3486 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3487 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3488 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3489
3490 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
3491 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
3492 release.</p>
3493
3494 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3495 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3496 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
3497 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
3498 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
3499 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
3500 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
3501 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
3502 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
3503 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
3504 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
3505
3506 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3507
3508 <ul>
3509
3510 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
3511     work also without a attached tty.</li>
3512 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
3513     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
3514     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
3515     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
3516     required).</li>
3517
3518 </ul>
3519
3520 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3521
3522 <ul>
3523
3524 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
3525 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
3526 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
3527 stick ISO image.</li>
3528 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
3529 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
3530 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
3531     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
3532     cope with this.</li>
3533 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
3534 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
3535     empty password hashes.</li>
3536 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
3537     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
3538     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
3539
3540 </ul>
3541
3542 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3543
3544 <ul>
3545
3546 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
3547     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
3548 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
3549     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
3550
3551 </ul>
3552
3553 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3554
3555 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3556
3557 <ul>
3558
3559 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
3560
3561 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
3562
3563 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
3564
3565 </ul>
3566
3567 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
3568 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
3569
3570 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3571
3572 <ul>
3573
3574 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
3575 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
3576 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
3577
3578 </ul>
3579
3580 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
3581 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
3582
3583
3584 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3585
3586 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3587
3588       </div>
3589       <div class="tags">
3590
3591
3592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3593
3594
3595       </div>
3596     </div>
3597     <div class="padding"></div>
3598
3599     <div class="entry">
3600       <div class="title">
3601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
3602       </div>
3603       <div class="date">
3604         18th August 2013
3605       </div>
3606       <div class="body">
3607         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3609 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3610 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3611 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3612 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3613 currently on the disk.</p>
3614
3615 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3616 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
3617 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3618 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3619 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3620 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3621 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3622 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3623 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3624 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3625 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3626 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3627 the broken disks.</p>
3628
3629       </div>
3630       <div class="tags">
3631
3632
3633         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>.
3634
3635
3636       </div>
3637     </div>
3638     <div class="padding"></div>
3639
3640     <div class="entry">
3641       <div class="title">
3642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
3643       </div>
3644       <div class="date">
3645          2nd August 2013
3646       </div>
3647       <div class="body">
3648         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
3649 have worked on a Norwegian
3650 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3651 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3652 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
3653 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
3654 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
3655 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
3656 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
3657 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
3658 progress of the translation:</p>
3659
3660 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3661
3662 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
3663 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
3664 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
3665 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
3666 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
3667 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
3668 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
3669 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
3670 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
3671 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
3672 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
3673
3674 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3675 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3676 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3677 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
3678 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
3679 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
3680 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
3681 project files currently available from
3682 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3683
3684 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3685 the updated
3686 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3687 and
3688 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3689 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3690 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3691 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3692
3693       </div>
3694       <div class="tags">
3695
3696
3697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3698
3699
3700       </div>
3701     </div>
3702     <div class="padding"></div>
3703
3704     <div class="entry">
3705       <div class="title">
3706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="date">
3709         27th July 2013
3710       </div>
3711       <div class="body">
3712         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3713 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3714
3715 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
3716 2013-07-27</strong></p>
3717
3718 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3719 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3720
3721 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3722
3723 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3724 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3725 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3726 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3727 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3728 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3729 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3730 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3731 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3732 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3733 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3734 desktop contains
3735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3736 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3737 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3738 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3739
3740 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3741 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3742 Squeeze release.</p>
3743
3744 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3745 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3746 release.</p>
3747
3748 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3749
3750 <ul>
3751
3752 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
3753    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
3754 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
3755    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
3756    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
3757    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
3758    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
3759 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
3760 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
3761 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
3762    crash bugs.</li>
3763
3764 </ul>
3765
3766 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3767
3768 <ul>
3769
3770 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
3771    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
3772 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
3773    netinst CD.</li>
3774 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
3775    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
3776 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
3777    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
3778    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
3779 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
3780    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
3781    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
3782 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
3783    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
3784    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
3785 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
3786    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
3787 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
3788
3789 </ul>
3790
3791 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3792
3793 <ul>
3794
3795 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
3796 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
3797     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
3798 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
3799
3800 </ul>
3801
3802 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3803
3804 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3805
3806 <ul>
3807
3808 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
3809
3810 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
3811
3812 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
3813
3814 </ul>
3815
3816 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
3817 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
3818
3819 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3820
3821 <ul>
3822
3823 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
3824 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
3825 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
3826
3827 </ul>
3828
3829 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
3830 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
3831
3832
3833 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3834
3835 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3836
3837       </div>
3838       <div class="tags">
3839
3840
3841         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3842
3843
3844       </div>
3845     </div>
3846     <div class="padding"></div>
3847
3848     <div class="entry">
3849       <div class="title">
3850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
3851       </div>
3852       <div class="date">
3853         17th July 2013
3854       </div>
3855       <div class="body">
3856         <p>Today I switched to
3857 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3858 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3859 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3860 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
3861 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3862 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3863 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3864 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3865 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3866 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3867 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3868 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3869 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3870 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3871 station from now on.</p>
3872
3873 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3874 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3875 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3876 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3877 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3878 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3879 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3880 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3881 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3882 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3883 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3884 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3885
3886 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3887 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3888 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3889 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3890 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3891 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3892 parameters are tuned:</p>
3893
3894 <ul>
3895
3896 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3897     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3898
3899 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3900     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3901     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3902
3903 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3904     systems.</li>
3905
3906 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3907     /etc/fstab.</li>
3908
3909 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3910
3911 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3912     cron.daily).</li>
3913
3914 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3915     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3916
3917 </ul>
3918
3919 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3920 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3921 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3922 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3923 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3924 from getting the data on the disk (see
3925 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3926 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3927 right thing to do.</p>
3928
3929 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3930 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3931 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3932
3933 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3934 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3935 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3936 instead of during my work.</p>
3937
3938 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3939 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3940
3941 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3942 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3943 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3944
3945 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3946 there.</p>
3947
3948 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3949 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3950 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3951 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3952 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3953 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3954 back.</p>
3955
3956       </div>
3957       <div class="tags">
3958
3959
3960         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>.
3961
3962
3963       </div>
3964     </div>
3965     <div class="padding"></div>
3966
3967     <div class="entry">
3968       <div class="title">
3969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3970       </div>
3971       <div class="date">
3972         10th July 2013
3973       </div>
3974       <div class="body">
3975         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3976 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3977 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3978 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3979 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3980 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3981 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3982 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3983
3984 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3985 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3986 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3987 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3988 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3989 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3990 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3991 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3992 lock up when I download a new
3993 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3994 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3995 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3996
3997 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3998 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3999 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4000 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4001 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4002 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4003
4004 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4005 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4006 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4007 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4008 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4009 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4010
4011 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4012 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4013 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4014 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4015 exist).</p>
4016
4017       </div>
4018       <div class="tags">
4019
4020
4021         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>.
4022
4023
4024       </div>
4025     </div>
4026     <div class="padding"></div>
4027
4028     <div class="entry">
4029       <div class="title">
4030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="date">
4033          9th July 2013
4034       </div>
4035       <div class="body">
4036         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4037 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4038 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4039 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4040 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4041 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4042 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4043
4044 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4045 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4046 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4047 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4048 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4049
4050       </div>
4051       <div class="tags">
4052
4053
4054         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>.
4055
4056
4057       </div>
4058     </div>
4059     <div class="padding"></div>
4060
4061     <div class="entry">
4062       <div class="title">
4063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
4064       </div>
4065       <div class="date">
4066          5th July 2013
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="body">
4069         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4071 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4072 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4073 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4074 ended up picking a
4075 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4076 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4077 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4078 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4079 on that below.</p>
4080
4081 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4082 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4083 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4084 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4085 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4086 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4087 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4088 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4089 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4090
4091 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4092 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4093 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4094 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4095 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4096 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4097 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4098
4099 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4100 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4101
4102 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4103 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4104 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4105 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4106 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4107 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4108 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4109 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4110 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4111 kernel developers as
4112 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4113 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4114 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4115 Lenovo forums, both for
4116 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4117 2012-11-10</a> and for
4118 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
4119 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4120 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4121 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4122 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4123 There is even a
4124 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4125 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4126 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4127
4128 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4129 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4130 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4131 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4132 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4133 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4134 fixed. :)</p>
4135
4136       </div>
4137       <div class="tags">
4138
4139
4140         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>.
4141
4142
4143       </div>
4144     </div>
4145     <div class="padding"></div>
4146
4147     <div class="entry">
4148       <div class="title">
4149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
4150       </div>
4151       <div class="date">
4152          4th July 2013
4153       </div>
4154       <div class="body">
4155         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4156 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4157 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4158 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4159 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4160 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4161 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4162 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4163 with an expencive door stop.</p>
4164
4165 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4166 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4167 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4168 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4169 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4170 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4171 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
4172
4173 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4174 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4175 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4176 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4177 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4178 new laptop now. :)</p>
4179
4180 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
4181
4182       </div>
4183       <div class="tags">
4184
4185
4186         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>.
4187
4188
4189       </div>
4190     </div>
4191     <div class="padding"></div>
4192
4193     <div class="entry">
4194       <div class="title">
4195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4196       </div>
4197       <div class="date">
4198          3rd July 2013
4199       </div>
4200       <div class="body">
4201         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4202 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4203
4204 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
4205 2013-07-03</strong></p>
4206
4207 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4208 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4209
4210 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4211
4212 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4213 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4214 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4215 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4216 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4217 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4218 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4219 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4220 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4221 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4222 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4223 desktop contains
4224 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4225 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4226 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4227 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4228
4229 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4230 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4231 Squeeze release.</p>
4232
4233 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4234 <ul>
4235   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
4236   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
4237     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
4238     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
4239   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
4240     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
4241     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
4242   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
4243     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
4244     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
4245     too.</li>
4246   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
4247     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
4248 </ul>
4249 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4250 <ul>
4251   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
4252   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
4253   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
4254     up for some language options.</li>
4255   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
4256   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
4257   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
4258     d-i is doing it.</li>
4259   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
4260     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
4261   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
4262     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
4263     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
4264   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
4265     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
4266   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
4267   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
4268     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
4269   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
4270     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
4271 </ul>
4272 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4273 <ul>
4274   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4275     available yet (698840).</li>
4276   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
4277 </ul>
4278 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4279
4280 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4281 <ul>
4282   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
4283   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
4284   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
4285 </ul>
4286
4287 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
4288 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
4289
4290 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4291 <ul>
4292   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
4293   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
4294   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
4295 </ul>
4296
4297 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
4298 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
4299
4300 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4301
4302 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4303
4304       </div>
4305       <div class="tags">
4306
4307
4308         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4309
4310
4311       </div>
4312     </div>
4313     <div class="padding"></div>
4314
4315     <div class="entry">
4316       <div class="title">
4317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
4318       </div>
4319       <div class="date">
4320         25th June 2013
4321       </div>
4322       <div class="body">
4323         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4324 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4325 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4326 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4327 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4328 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4329 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4330 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4331 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4332 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4333 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4334
4335 <p><pre>
4336 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4337 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4338 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4339 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4340 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4341 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4342 firmware-ipw2x00
4343 firmware-ipw2x00
4344 Preconfiguring packages ...
4345 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4346 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4347 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4348 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4349 #
4350 </pre></p>
4351
4352 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4353 printed instead:</p>
4354
4355 <p><pre>
4356 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4357 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4358 #
4359 </pre></p>
4360
4361 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4362 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4363
4364 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4365 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4366 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4367 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4368 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4369 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4370 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4371 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4372 machine.</p>
4373
4374 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4375 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4376 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4377 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4378 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4379 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4380
4381       </div>
4382       <div class="tags">
4383
4384
4385         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4386
4387
4388       </div>
4389     </div>
4390     <div class="padding"></div>
4391
4392     <div class="entry">
4393       <div class="title">
4394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
4395       </div>
4396       <div class="date">
4397         22nd June 2013
4398       </div>
4399       <div class="body">
4400         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4401 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
4402 which check that services are running, working, and return the
4403 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
4404 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
4405 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
4406 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
4407 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
4408 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
4409
4410 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
4411 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
4412 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
4413 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
4414 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
4415 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
4416 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
4417 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
4418 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
4419 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
4420 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
4421 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
4422 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
4423 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
4424
4425 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
4426 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
4427 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
4428 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
4429 the problem.</p>
4430
4431 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
4432 please join us on
4433 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
4434 irc.debian.org</a> and the
4435 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
4436 list.</p>
4437
4438       </div>
4439       <div class="tags">
4440
4441
4442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4443
4444
4445       </div>
4446     </div>
4447     <div class="padding"></div>
4448
4449     <div class="entry">
4450       <div class="title">
4451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
4452       </div>
4453       <div class="date">
4454         17th June 2013
4455       </div>
4456       <div class="body">
4457         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4458 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
4459 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
4460 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
4461 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
4462 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
4463 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
4464 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
4465
4466 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4467
4468 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
4469 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
4470 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
4471 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
4472 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
4473 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
4474 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
4475 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
4476 field.</p>
4477
4478 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
4479 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
4480 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
4481 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
4482 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
4483 the only one we have in our country.</p>
4484
4485 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4486 project?</strong></p>
4487
4488 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
4489 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
4490 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
4491 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
4492 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
4493 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
4494 ways to contribute.</p>
4495
4496 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
4497 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
4498 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
4499 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
4500 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
4501 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
4502 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
4503 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
4504 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
4505 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
4506
4507 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4508 Edu?</strong></p>
4509
4510 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
4511 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
4512 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
4513 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
4514 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
4515 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
4516 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
4517 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
4518
4519 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
4520 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
4521 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
4522 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
4523 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
4524 project.</p>
4525
4526 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4527 Edu?</strong></p>
4528
4529 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
4530 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
4531 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
4532 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
4533 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
4534 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
4535 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
4536 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
4537 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
4538
4539 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
4540 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
4541 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
4542 on.</p>
4543
4544 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4545
4546 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
4547 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
4548 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
4549 Enlightenment project a lot!),
4550 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
4551 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
4552 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
4553 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
4554 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
4555
4556 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4557 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4558
4559 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
4560 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
4561 that:</p>
4562
4563 <ul>
4564
4565 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
4566
4567 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
4568     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
4569     of teenagers more?</li>
4570
4571 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
4572     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
4573     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
4574     them!)</li>
4575
4576 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
4577     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
4578     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
4579
4580 </ul>
4581
4582 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
4583 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
4584 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
4585 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
4586 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
4587
4588       </div>
4589       <div class="tags">
4590
4591
4592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4593
4594
4595       </div>
4596     </div>
4597     <div class="padding"></div>
4598
4599     <div class="entry">
4600       <div class="title">
4601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
4602       </div>
4603       <div class="date">
4604         12th June 2013
4605       </div>
4606       <div class="body">
4607         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
4608 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4609 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
4610 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
4611 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
4612 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
4613
4614 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4615
4616 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
4617 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
4618 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
4619
4620 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
4621 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
4622 each other.</p>
4623
4624 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4625 project?</strong></p>
4626
4627 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
4628 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
4629 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
4630 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
4631 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
4632 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
4633 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
4634 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
4635 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
4636 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
4637 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
4638 we'll get there one day.</p>
4639
4640 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4641 Edu?</strong></p>
4642
4643 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
4644 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
4645 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
4646 very high quality work.</p>
4647
4648 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
4649 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
4650 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
4651 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
4652 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
4653
4654 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4655 Edu?</strong></p>
4656
4657 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
4658 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
4659 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
4660
4661 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
4662 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
4663 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
4664 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
4665 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
4666 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
4667 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
4668 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
4669 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
4670 currently.</p>
4671
4672 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
4673 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
4674 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
4675 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
4676 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
4677 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
4678 autonomous.</p>
4679
4680 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4681
4682 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
4683 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
4684 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
4685 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
4686 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
4687
4688 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
4689 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
4690 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
4691 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
4692 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
4693 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
4694 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
4695 X.</p>
4696
4697 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
4698 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
4699 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
4700 it :p)
4701
4702 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4703 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4704
4705 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
4706 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
4707 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
4708 that.</p>
4709
4710 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
4711 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
4712 advantage of that.</p>
4713
4714 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
4715 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
4716 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
4717 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
4718 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
4719 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
4720 best solution for them.</p>
4721
4722 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
4723 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
4724 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
4725
4726       </div>
4727       <div class="tags">
4728
4729
4730         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4731
4732
4733       </div>
4734     </div>
4735     <div class="padding"></div>
4736
4737     <div class="entry">
4738       <div class="title">
4739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
4740       </div>
4741       <div class="date">
4742         11th June 2013
4743       </div>
4744       <div class="body">
4745         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4746 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4747 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4748 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4749 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4750 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4751 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4752 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4753 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4754 i915 driver used by the
4755 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4756 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4757
4758 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4759 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4760 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4761 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4762 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4763
4764 <pre>
4765 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4766 update-initramfs -u -k all
4767 </pre>
4768
4769 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4770 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4771 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4772 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4773 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4774 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4775 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4776 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4777 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4778 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4779 number.</p>
4780
4781 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4782 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4783
4784 <p><pre>
4785 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4786     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4787     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4788  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4789  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4790     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4791  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4792     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4793  Latency: 0
4794  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4795  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4796  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4797  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4798  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4799  Capabilities: <access denied>
4800  Kernel driver in use: i915
4801 </pre></p>
4802
4803 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4804
4805 <p><pre>
4806 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4807        ...
4808         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4809         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4810        ...
4811 }
4812 </pre></p>
4813
4814 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4815 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4816 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4817 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4818 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4819 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4820 yet shown up in
4821 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4822 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4823 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4824 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4825 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4826 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4827
4828 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4829 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4830 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4831 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4832 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4833 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4834 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4835 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4836 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4837 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4838 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4839 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4840
4841 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4842 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4843 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4844 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4845 backlight.</p>
4846
4847       </div>
4848       <div class="tags">
4849
4850
4851         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>.
4852
4853
4854       </div>
4855     </div>
4856     <div class="padding"></div>
4857
4858     <div class="entry">
4859       <div class="title">
4860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4861       </div>
4862       <div class="date">
4863         10th June 2013
4864       </div>
4865       <div class="body">
4866         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4867 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4868
4869 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
4870 2013-06-10</strong></p>
4871
4872 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4873 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4874
4875 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4876
4877 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4878 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4879 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4880 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4881 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4882 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4883 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4884 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4885 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4886 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4887 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4888 desktop contains
4889 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4890 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4891 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4892 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4893
4894 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4895 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4896 Squeeze release.</p>
4897
4898 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4899
4900 <ul>
4901
4902 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
4903 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
4904 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
4905 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
4906 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
4907
4908 </ul>
4909
4910 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4911
4912 <ul>
4913
4914 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
4915 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
4916 <li>New Romanian translation.
4917 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
4918 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
4919 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
4920 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
4921 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
4922 <li>More testsuite tests.
4923 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
4924 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
4925
4926 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
4927 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
4928
4929 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
4930 them up with GOsa².</li>
4931
4932 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
4933
4934 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
4935 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
4936 entered password). </li>
4937
4938 </ul>
4939
4940 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4941
4942 <ul>
4943
4944 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
4945
4946 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4947 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
4948 missing import feature).</li>
4949
4950 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
4951
4952 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
4953 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
4954 unfixed.</li>
4955
4956 </ul>
4957
4958 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4959
4960 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4961
4962 <ul>
4963
4964 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
4965
4966 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
4967
4968 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
4969
4970 </ul>
4971
4972 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
4973 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
4974
4975 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4976
4977 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4978
4979       </div>
4980       <div class="tags">
4981
4982
4983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4984
4985
4986       </div>
4987     </div>
4988     <div class="padding"></div>
4989
4990     <div class="entry">
4991       <div class="title">
4992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="date">
4995          5th June 2013
4996       </div>
4997       <div class="body">
4998         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
4999 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
5000 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
5001 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
5002 the project:
5003
5004 <ol>
5005
5006 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
5007   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
5008   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
5009   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
5010   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
5011
5012 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
5013   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
5014   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
5015   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
5016   #698840</a>.</li>
5017
5018 </ol>
5019
5020 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
5021 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5022 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
5023
5024       </div>
5025       <div class="tags">
5026
5027
5028         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5029
5030
5031       </div>
5032     </div>
5033     <div class="padding"></div>
5034
5035     <div class="entry">
5036       <div class="title">
5037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
5038       </div>
5039       <div class="date">
5040          4th June 2013
5041       </div>
5042       <div class="body">
5043         <p>It has been a while since my last English
5044 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5045 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
5046 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
5047 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
5048 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
5049
5050 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5051
5052 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
5053 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
5054 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
5055 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
5056
5057 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
5058 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
5059 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
5060
5061 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5062 project?</strong></p>
5063
5064 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
5065 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
5066 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
5067 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
5068 manual.
5069
5070 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
5071 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
5072 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
5073 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
5074
5075 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
5076 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
5077 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
5078 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
5079 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
5080 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
5081 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
5082 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
5083 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
5084 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
5085
5086 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
5087 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
5088 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
5089 beautiful project.</p>
5090
5091 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5092 Edu?</strong></p>
5093
5094 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
5095 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
5096 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
5097
5098 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
5099 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
5100 of educational free software.</p>
5101
5102 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5103 Edu?</strong></p>
5104
5105 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
5106 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
5107 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
5108 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
5109 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
5110
5111 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
5112 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
5113 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
5114 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
5115 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
5116 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
5117 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
5118 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
5119
5120 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5121
5122 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
5123 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
5124 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
5125 also using the mathematical software
5126 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
5127 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
5128 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
5129
5130 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
5131 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
5132 statistics?</strong></p>
5133
5134 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
5135 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
5136 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
5137 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
5138
5139 <ul>
5140
5141 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
5142 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
5143 constructions in planar geometry
5144
5145 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
5146 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
5147 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
5148
5149 </ul>
5150
5151 <p>I like also
5152 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
5153 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
5154 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
5155
5156 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5157 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5158
5159 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
5160
5161 <ul>
5162
5163 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
5164
5165 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
5166     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
5167     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
5168
5169 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
5170
5171 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
5172     system.</li>
5173
5174 </ul>
5175
5176       </div>
5177       <div class="tags">
5178
5179
5180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5181
5182
5183       </div>
5184     </div>
5185     <div class="padding"></div>
5186
5187     <div class="entry">
5188       <div class="title">
5189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
5190       </div>
5191       <div class="date">
5192          1st June 2013
5193       </div>
5194       <div class="body">
5195         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5196 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
5197 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
5198 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
5199 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
5200 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
5201 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
5202 program.</p>
5203
5204 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
5205
5206 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
5207 <p>
5208 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
5209 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5210 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
5211 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
5212 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5213 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
5214 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
5215 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
5216 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
5217 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
5218 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
5219 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
5220 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
5221 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
5222 </p>
5223
5224 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
5225 <p>
5226 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
5227 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
5228 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
5229 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
5230 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
5231 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
5232 </p>
5233
5234 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
5235 <p>
5236 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
5237 </p>
5238
5239 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
5240 <p>
5241 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
5242 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
5243 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
5244 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
5245 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
5246 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
5247 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
5248 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
5249 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
5250 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
5251 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
5252 </p>
5253
5254 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
5255 <p>
5256 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5257 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
5258 </p>
5259
5260 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
5261 <p>
5262 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
5263 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
5264 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
5265 </p>
5266
5267 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
5268 <p>
5269 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5270 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
5271 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
5272 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
5273 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
5274 </p>
5275
5276 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
5277 <p>
5278 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5279 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
5280 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5281 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
5282 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
5283 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
5284 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
5285 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
5286 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
5287 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
5288 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
5289 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
5290 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
5291 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
5292 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
5293 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
5294 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
5295 </p>
5296
5297 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
5298 <p>
5299 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5300 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
5301 </p>
5302
5303 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
5304 <p>
5305 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
5306 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
5307 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5308 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5309 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
5310 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
5311 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
5312 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
5313 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
5314 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
5315 </p>
5316
5317 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
5318 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
5319 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
5320 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
5321 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
5322 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
5323 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
5324
5325       </div>
5326       <div class="tags">
5327
5328
5329         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5330
5331
5332       </div>
5333     </div>
5334     <div class="padding"></div>
5335
5336     <div class="entry">
5337       <div class="title">
5338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
5339       </div>
5340       <div class="date">
5341         27th May 2013
5342       </div>
5343       <div class="body">
5344         <p>Two days ago, I asked
5345 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
5346 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
5347 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
5348 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
5349 and Windows 8.</p>
5350
5351 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
5352 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
5353 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
5354 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
5355 enough to tell.</p>
5356
5357 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
5358 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
5359 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
5360 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
5361 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
5362 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
5363 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
5364 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
5365 to follow.</p>
5366
5367 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
5368 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
5369 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
5370 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
5371 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
5372 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
5373 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
5374 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
5375
5376 <p>I've updated the
5377 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
5378 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
5379 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
5380 machine.</p>
5381
5382 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
5383 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
5384
5385       </div>
5386       <div class="tags">
5387
5388
5389         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>.
5390
5391
5392       </div>
5393     </div>
5394     <div class="padding"></div>
5395
5396     <div class="entry">
5397       <div class="title">
5398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
5399       </div>
5400       <div class="date">
5401         25th May 2013
5402       </div>
5403       <div class="body">
5404         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5405 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5406 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5407 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5408 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5409 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
5410
5411 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5412 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5413 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5414 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5415 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5416 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5417 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5418 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5419 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5420 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
5421
5422 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5423 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5424 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5425 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5426 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5427 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
5428
5429 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
5430 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
5431 on new Laptops?</p>
5432
5433       </div>
5434       <div class="tags">
5435
5436
5437         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>.
5438
5439
5440       </div>
5441     </div>
5442     <div class="padding"></div>
5443
5444     <div class="entry">
5445       <div class="title">
5446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="date">
5449         17th May 2013
5450       </div>
5451       <div class="body">
5452         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
5453 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
5454 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
5455 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
5456 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
5457 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
5458 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
5459 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
5460 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
5461 donate some money</a>.
5462
5463 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
5464 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
5465 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
5466 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
5467 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
5468
5469 <p>The script,
5470 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
5471 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
5472 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
5473 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
5474
5475 <ol>
5476
5477 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
5478 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
5479 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
5480     our configuration.</li>
5481 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
5482     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
5483     according to the profile specified in the config above,
5484     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
5485 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
5486     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
5487 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
5488
5489 </ol>
5490
5491 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
5492 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
5493 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
5494 the needed packages.</p>
5495
5496 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
5497 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
5498 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
5499 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
5500 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
5501 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
5502
5503 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
5504 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
5505 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
5506
5507 <p><pre>
5508 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
5509 DESKTOP="lxde"
5510 </pre></p>
5511
5512 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
5513 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
5514 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
5515 boot.</p>
5516
5517       </div>
5518       <div class="tags">
5519
5520
5521         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>.
5522
5523
5524       </div>
5525     </div>
5526     <div class="padding"></div>
5527
5528     <div class="entry">
5529       <div class="title">
5530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5531       </div>
5532       <div class="date">
5533         14th May 2013
5534       </div>
5535       <div class="body">
5536         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5537 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
5538 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5539
5540 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
5541 2013-05-14</strong></p>
5542
5543 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
5544 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
5545 codename "Wheezy".</p>
5546
5547 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5548
5549 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5550 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5551 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
5552 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5553 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5554 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5555 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
5556 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
5557
5558 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
5559 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
5560 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
5561
5562 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5563 <ul>
5564   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
5565     default.</li>
5566   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
5567   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
5568   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
5569     ibus-anthy.</li>
5570 </ul>
5571
5572 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5573 <ul>
5574
5575   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
5576     reliability improvements.</li>
5577   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
5578     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
5579   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
5580     problems.</li>
5581   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
5582     direct:// URL.</li>
5583   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
5584   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
5585   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
5586   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
5587     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
5588   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
5589     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
5590 </ul>
5591
5592 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5593 <ul>
5594
5595   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
5596     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
5597     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
5598   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
5599   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5600     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
5601   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
5602   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
5603   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
5604     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
5605   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
5606     password submission problem
5607     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
5608
5609 </ul>
5610
5611 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5612
5613 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5614 <ul>
5615
5616   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
5617   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
5618   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
5619
5620 </ul>
5621
5622 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
5623
5624 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
5625
5626 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5627
5628 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5629
5630       </div>
5631       <div class="tags">
5632
5633
5634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5635
5636
5637       </div>
5638     </div>
5639     <div class="padding"></div>
5640
5641     <div class="entry">
5642       <div class="title">
5643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
5644       </div>
5645       <div class="date">
5646         11th May 2013
5647       </div>
5648       <div class="body">
5649         <P>In January,
5650 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
5651 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
5652 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
5653 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
5654 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
5655 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
5656 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
5657 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
5658 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
5659 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
5660 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
5661 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
5662
5663 <p><table>
5664 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
5665 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
5666 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
5667 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
5668 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
5669 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
5670 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
5671 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
5672 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
5673 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
5674 </table></p>
5675
5676 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
5677 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
5678 available in experimental.</p>
5679
5680 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
5681 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
5682 for LEGO designers.</p>
5683
5684       </div>
5685       <div class="tags">
5686
5687
5688         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>.
5689
5690
5691       </div>
5692     </div>
5693     <div class="padding"></div>
5694
5695     <div class="entry">
5696       <div class="title">
5697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
5698       </div>
5699       <div class="date">
5700          5th May 2013
5701       </div>
5702       <div class="body">
5703         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
5704 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
5705 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
5706 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
5707 soon.</p>
5708
5709 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
5710 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
5711 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
5712 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
5713 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
5714 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
5715 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
5716 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
5717 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
5718 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
5719 Edu.</a>
5720
5721 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
5722 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
5723 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
5724 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
5725 follow.<p>
5726
5727       </div>
5728       <div class="tags">
5729
5730
5731         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>.
5732
5733
5734       </div>
5735     </div>
5736     <div class="padding"></div>
5737
5738     <div class="entry">
5739       <div class="title">
5740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5741       </div>
5742       <div class="date">
5743         26th April 2013
5744       </div>
5745       <div class="body">
5746         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
5747 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
5748 announcement:</p>
5749
5750 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
5751 2013-04-26</strong></p>
5752
5753 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
5754 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5755
5756 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5757
5758 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5759 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5760 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5761 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
5762 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5763 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5764 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5765 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5766 installed via the network.</p>
5767
5768 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
5769 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
5770 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
5771
5772 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5773
5774 <ul>
5775 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
5776   <ul>
5777      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
5778      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
5779          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
5780          manual.)</li>
5781      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
5782      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
5783      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
5784      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
5785      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
5786      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
5787      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
5788      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
5789      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
5790      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
5791      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
5792      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
5793          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
5794          manual</a> for more details.</li>
5795      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
5796          installation.</li>
5797      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
5798          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
5799   </ul></li>
5800 </ul>
5801
5802 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
5803 <ul>
5804 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
5805     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
5806     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
5807 </ul>
5808
5809 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
5810 <ul>
5811 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
5812     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
5813     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
5814 </ul>
5815
5816 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5817 <ul>
5818 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
5819     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
5820     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
5821 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
5822     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
5823     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
5824 </ul>
5825
5826 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
5827 <ul>
5828 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
5829     yet.</li>
5830 </ul>
5831
5832 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
5833
5834 <ul>
5835 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
5836     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
5837     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
5838 </ul>
5839
5840 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5841
5842 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
5843 <ul>
5844 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5845 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5846 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
5847 </ul>
5848
5849 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
5850
5851 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
5852
5853 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5854
5855 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5856
5857       </div>
5858       <div class="tags">
5859
5860
5861         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5862
5863
5864       </div>
5865     </div>
5866     <div class="padding"></div>
5867
5868     <div class="entry">
5869       <div class="title">
5870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
5871       </div>
5872       <div class="date">
5873         16th April 2013
5874       </div>
5875       <div class="body">
5876         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
5877 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
5878 Details about the gathering can be found
5879 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
5880 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
5881 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
5882 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
5883 weekend.</p>
5884
5885 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
5886 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
5887 Edu release.</p>
5888
5889 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
5890
5891       </div>
5892       <div class="tags">
5893
5894
5895         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5896
5897
5898       </div>
5899     </div>
5900     <div class="padding"></div>
5901
5902     <div class="entry">
5903       <div class="title">
5904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
5905       </div>
5906       <div class="date">
5907          3rd April 2013
5908       </div>
5909       <div class="body">
5910         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
5911 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
5912 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
5913 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
5914
5915 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
5916 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
5917 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
5918 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
5919 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
5920 BTS. :)</p>
5921
5922       </div>
5923       <div class="tags">
5924
5925
5926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5927
5928
5929       </div>
5930     </div>
5931     <div class="padding"></div>
5932
5933     <div class="entry">
5934       <div class="title">
5935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="date">
5938         26th March 2013
5939       </div>
5940       <div class="body">
5941         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
5942 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
5943 font you use when printing.</p>
5944
5945 <p>Three years ago,
5946 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
5947 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
5948 changed their default front from
5949 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
5950 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
5951 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
5952 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
5953 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
5954 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
5955 prints.</p>
5956
5957 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
5958 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
5959 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
5960 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
5961 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
5962 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
5963 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
5964 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
5965 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
5966 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
5967 depend on the documents printed.</p>
5968
5969 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
5970 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
5971 and save some money in the process.</p>
5972
5973 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
5974 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
5975 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
5976 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
5977 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
5978 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
5979 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
5980 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
5981 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
5982
5983       </div>
5984       <div class="tags">
5985
5986
5987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5988
5989
5990       </div>
5991     </div>
5992     <div class="padding"></div>
5993
5994     <div class="entry">
5995       <div class="title">
5996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
5997       </div>
5998       <div class="date">
5999         24th March 2013
6000       </div>
6001       <div class="body">
6002         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
6003 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
6004 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
6005 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
6006 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
6007 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
6008 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
6009 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
6010 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
6011 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
6012 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
6013 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
6014
6015 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
6016 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
6017 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
6018 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
6019 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
6020 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
6021 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
6022 all I had to do was to use the
6023 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
6024 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
6025 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
6026 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
6027 xsltproc/fop (aka
6028 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
6029 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
6030 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
6031 technical detail.</p>
6032
6033 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
6034 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
6035 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
6036 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
6037 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
6038 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
6039
6040 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
6041 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
6042 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
6043 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
6044 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
6045 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
6046 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
6047 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
6048 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
6049
6050 <p><blockquote><pre>
6051 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6052 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6053   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6054     &lt;hr/&gt;
6055   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6056 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6057 </pre></blockquote></p>
6058
6059 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6060
6061 <p><blockquote><pre>
6062 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6063 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6064   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6065     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
6066       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
6067     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
6068   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6069 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6070 </pre></blockquote></p>
6071
6072 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
6073 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
6074 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
6075 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
6076 enough.</p>
6077
6078 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
6079 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
6080 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
6081 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
6082 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
6083 look like this:</p>
6084
6085 <p><blockquote><pre>
6086 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6087 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6088   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6089     &lt;br/&gt;
6090   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6091 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6092 </pre></blockquote></p>
6093
6094 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6095
6096 <p><blockquote><pre>
6097 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6098 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
6099   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
6100   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6101     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
6102   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6103 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6104 </pre></blockquote></p>
6105
6106 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
6107 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
6108 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
6109 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
6110 page.</p>
6111
6112 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
6113 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
6114 github</a>
6115 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
6116 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
6117 days.</p>
6118
6119       </div>
6120       <div class="tags">
6121
6122
6123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6124
6125
6126       </div>
6127     </div>
6128     <div class="padding"></div>
6129
6130     <div class="entry">
6131       <div class="title">
6132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
6133       </div>
6134       <div class="date">
6135         17th March 2013
6136       </div>
6137       <div class="body">
6138         <p>Via
6139 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
6140 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
6141 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
6142 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
6143 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
6144 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
6145 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
6146
6147 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
6148 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
6149
6150 <blockquote>
6151 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
6152 </blockquote>
6153
6154 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
6155
6156 <blockquote>
6157 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
6158 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
6159 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
6160 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
6161 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
6162 </blockquote>
6163
6164 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
6165 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
6166 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
6167 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
6168
6169 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
6170 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
6171
6172 <blockquote>
6173 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
6174 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
6175 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
6176 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
6177 </blockquote>
6178
6179 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
6180 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
6181 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
6182 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
6183 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
6184
6185 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
6186 embedding:</p>
6187
6188 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6189
6190       </div>
6191       <div class="tags">
6192
6193
6194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6195
6196
6197       </div>
6198     </div>
6199     <div class="padding"></div>
6200
6201     <div class="entry">
6202       <div class="title">
6203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="date">
6206          8th March 2013
6207       </div>
6208       <div class="body">
6209         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
6210 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6211 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
6212 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
6213 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
6214 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
6215 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
6216
6217 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
6218
6219 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
6220 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
6221
6222 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
6223 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
6224 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
6225 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
6226 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
6227 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
6228
6229 <p>Images are available for download at
6230 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
6231
6232 <p>md5sums:
6233 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6234 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6235 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
6236
6237 <p>sha1sums:
6238 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6239 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6240 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
6241
6242 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
6243
6244 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
6245 2013-03-03:</p>
6246
6247 <ul>
6248   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
6249   <ul>
6250         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
6251         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
6252   </ul></li>
6253   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
6254   <ul>
6255         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
6256         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
6257   </ul></li>
6258   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
6259      <ul>
6260         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
6261         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
6262         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
6263                 Closes: #664596</li>
6264         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
6265                 Closes: #664976</li>
6266         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
6267            <ul>
6268                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
6269                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
6270            </ul></li>
6271         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
6272            <ul>
6273                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
6274                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
6275                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
6276                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
6277                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
6278            </ul></li>
6279         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
6280     </ul>
6281   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
6282     <ul>
6283         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
6284     </ul></li>
6285 </ul>
6286
6287 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
6288 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
6289 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
6290 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
6291
6292 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
6293 mailinglist
6294 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
6295 </p></blockquote>
6296
6297 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
6298
6299       </div>
6300       <div class="tags">
6301
6302
6303         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6304
6305
6306       </div>
6307     </div>
6308     <div class="padding"></div>
6309
6310     <div class="entry">
6311       <div class="title">
6312         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
6313       </div>
6314       <div class="date">
6315          3rd March 2013
6316       </div>
6317       <div class="body">
6318         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
6319 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
6320 support using
6321 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
6322 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
6323 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
6324 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
6325 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
6326 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
6327 using the GNU LGPL, and
6328 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
6329
6330 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
6331 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
6332 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
6333 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
6334 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
6335 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
6336
6337 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
6338 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
6339 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
6340 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
6341 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
6342 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
6343 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
6344 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
6345 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
6346 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
6347 signal distribution is handled using
6348 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
6349 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
6350 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
6351 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
6352 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
6353 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
6354 them up a bit more first.</p>
6355
6356 <p>The development is coordinated on the
6357 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
6358 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
6359 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
6360 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
6361 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
6362 development.</p>
6363
6364       </div>
6365       <div class="tags">
6366
6367
6368         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6369
6370
6371       </div>
6372     </div>
6373     <div class="padding"></div>
6374
6375     <div class="entry">
6376       <div class="title">
6377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
6378       </div>
6379       <div class="date">
6380         27th February 2013
6381       </div>
6382       <div class="body">
6383         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
6384 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
6385 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
6386 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
6387 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
6388 (where I am the chair of the board) and
6389 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
6390 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
6391 GNU», with this description:
6392
6393 <p><blockquote>
6394 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
6395 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
6396 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
6397 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
6398 </blockquote></p>
6399
6400 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
6401 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
6402 am really curious how many will show up.  See
6403 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
6404 page</a> for the location details.</p>
6405
6406       </div>
6407       <div class="tags">
6408
6409
6410         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6411
6412
6413       </div>
6414     </div>
6415     <div class="padding"></div>
6416
6417     <div class="entry">
6418       <div class="title">
6419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
6420       </div>
6421       <div class="date">
6422         15th February 2013
6423       </div>
6424       <div class="body">
6425         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
6426 now a great source of free maps available from
6427 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
6428 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
6429 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
6430 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
6431 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
6432 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
6433 page for descriptions).</p>
6434
6435 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
6436 map you can just edit the
6437 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
6438 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
6439
6440       </div>
6441       <div class="tags">
6442
6443
6444         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
6445
6446
6447       </div>
6448     </div>
6449     <div class="padding"></div>
6450
6451     <div class="entry">
6452       <div class="title">
6453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
6454       </div>
6455       <div class="date">
6456         12th February 2013
6457       </div>
6458       <div class="body">
6459         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
6460 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
6461 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
6462 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
6463 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
6464 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
6465 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
6466 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
6467 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
6468 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
6469 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
6470 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
6471 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
6472 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
6473 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
6474 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
6475
6476 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
6477 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
6478 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
6479 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
6480 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
6481 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
6482 fields:</p>
6483
6484 <p><pre>
6485 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6486 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6487 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
6488 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6489 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6490 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6491 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6492 </pre></p>
6493
6494 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
6495 answer regarding
6496 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
6497 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
6498 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
6499 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
6500
6501 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
6502
6503 <p><pre>
6504 BEGIN:VCARD
6505 VERSION:2.1
6506 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
6507 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
6508 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
6509 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
6510 REV:20130212T095000Z
6511 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6512 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6513 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6514 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6515 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6516 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6517 END:VCARD
6518 </pre></p>
6519
6520 <p>The resulting QR code created using
6521 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
6522 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
6523 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
6524 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
6525 system.</p>
6526
6527 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
6528
6529 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
6530 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
6531 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
6532 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
6533
6534 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
6535 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
6536
6537       </div>
6538       <div class="tags">
6539
6540
6541         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6542
6543
6544       </div>
6545     </div>
6546     <div class="padding"></div>
6547
6548     <div class="entry">
6549       <div class="title">
6550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
6551       </div>
6552       <div class="date">
6553         10th February 2013
6554       </div>
6555       <div class="body">
6556         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
6557
6558 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
6559 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
6560 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
6561 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
6562 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
6563 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
6564 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
6565 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
6566 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
6567 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
6568 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
6569
6570 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
6571 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
6572 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
6573 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
6574 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
6575 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
6576 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
6577 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
6578 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
6579 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
6580 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
6581 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
6582 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
6583 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
6584 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
6585 ones own
6586 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
6587 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
6588 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
6589 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
6590 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
6591 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
6592 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
6593 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
6594 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
6595 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
6596 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
6597
6598 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
6599 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
6600 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
6601 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
6602 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
6603 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
6604
6605 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
6606 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
6607 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
6608
6609       </div>
6610       <div class="tags">
6611
6612
6613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6614
6615
6616       </div>
6617     </div>
6618     <div class="padding"></div>
6619
6620     <div class="entry">
6621       <div class="title">
6622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
6623       </div>
6624       <div class="date">
6625          2nd February 2013
6626       </div>
6627       <div class="body">
6628         <p>My
6629 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6630 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
6631 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
6632 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6633 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
6634 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6635 version too.</p>
6636
6637 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6638 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6639 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6640 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6641 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
6642 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6643 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
6644 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
6645
6646 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6647 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6648 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6649 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6650 it. :)</p>
6651
6652 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6653 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6654 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6655
6656       </div>
6657       <div class="tags">
6658
6659
6660         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>.
6661
6662
6663       </div>
6664     </div>
6665     <div class="padding"></div>
6666
6667     <div class="entry">
6668       <div class="title">
6669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
6670       </div>
6671       <div class="date">
6672         22nd January 2013
6673       </div>
6674       <div class="body">
6675         <p>Yesterday, I
6676 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6677 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6678 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6679 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6680 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
6681 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6682 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6683 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6684 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
6685 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6686 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
6687 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
6688 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
6689
6690 <pre>
6691 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6692 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6693 </pre>
6694
6695 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
6696 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6697 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6698 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
6699
6700 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6701 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
6702 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6703 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6704 word.</p>
6705
6706 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6707 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6708 process.</p>
6709
6710 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6711 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
6712
6713       </div>
6714       <div class="tags">
6715
6716
6717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6718
6719
6720       </div>
6721     </div>
6722     <div class="padding"></div>
6723
6724     <div class="entry">
6725       <div class="title">
6726         <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>
6727       </div>
6728       <div class="date">
6729         21st January 2013
6730       </div>
6731       <div class="body">
6732         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6733 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6734 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
6735 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
6736 it, fetch the
6737 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6738 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
6739 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
6740 autostart script.</p>
6741
6742 <p>The design is simple:</p>
6743
6744 <ul>
6745
6746 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6747 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
6748
6749 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6750 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6751 initially did.</li>
6752
6753 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6754 the APT database, a database
6755 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6756 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
6757
6758 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6759 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6760 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6761 package or packages.</li>
6762
6763 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6764 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
6765
6766 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6767 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
6768
6769 </ul>
6770
6771 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
6772 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
6773 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6774 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
6775
6776 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6777 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6778 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6779 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6780 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6781
6782 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6783 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6784 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6785 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6786 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6787 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6788 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6789 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6790
6791 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6792 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6793 '<tt>svn checkout
6794 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6795 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6796 devscripts package.</p>
6797
6798 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6799 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6800 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6801 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6802 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6803
6804       </div>
6805       <div class="tags">
6806
6807
6808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
6809
6810
6811       </div>
6812     </div>
6813     <div class="padding"></div>
6814
6815     <div class="entry">
6816       <div class="title">
6817         <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>
6818       </div>
6819       <div class="date">
6820         19th January 2013
6821       </div>
6822       <div class="body">
6823         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6824 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6825 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6826 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6827 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6828 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6829 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6830 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6831 not a durable solution.
6832
6833 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6834 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6835
6836 <ul>
6837
6838 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6839   than A4).</li>
6840 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6841 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6842 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6843 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6844 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6845 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6846 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6847 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6848 size).</li>
6849 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6850   X.org packages.</li>
6851 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6852   the time).
6853
6854 </ul>
6855
6856 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6857 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6858 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6859 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6860 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6861 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6862 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6863 still be useful.</p>
6864
6865 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6866 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6867 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6868 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6869 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6870 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6871
6872       </div>
6873       <div class="tags">
6874
6875
6876         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>.
6877
6878
6879       </div>
6880     </div>
6881     <div class="padding"></div>
6882
6883     <div class="entry">
6884       <div class="title">
6885         <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>
6886       </div>
6887       <div class="date">
6888         18th January 2013
6889       </div>
6890       <div class="body">
6891         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6892 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6893 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6894 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6895 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6896 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6897 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6898
6899 <pre>
6900 #!/usr/bin/python
6901 import sys
6902 import apt
6903 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6904     cache = apt.Cache()
6905     cache.open(None)
6906     thepkgs = []
6907     for pkg in cache:
6908         version = pkg.candidate
6909         if version is None:
6910             version = pkg.installed
6911         if version is None:
6912             continue
6913         record = version.record
6914         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6915             continue
6916         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6917         for t in mime_types:
6918             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6919             if t == mimetype:
6920                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6921     return thepkgs
6922 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6923 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6924     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6925 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6926 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6927     print "  %s" %pkg
6928 </pre>
6929
6930 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6931
6932 <pre>
6933 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6934 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6935   gecko-mediaplayer
6936 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6937 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6938   browser-plugin-gnash
6939 %
6940 </pre>
6941
6942 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6943 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6944 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6945 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6946
6947 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6948 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6949 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6950 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6951 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6952 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6953
6954       </div>
6955       <div class="tags">
6956
6957
6958         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>.
6959
6960
6961       </div>
6962     </div>
6963     <div class="padding"></div>
6964
6965     <div class="entry">
6966       <div class="title">
6967         <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>
6968       </div>
6969       <div class="date">
6970         16th January 2013
6971       </div>
6972       <div class="body">
6973         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6974 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6975 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6976 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6977 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6978 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6979 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6980 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6981
6982 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6983 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6984 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6985 can be found on the
6986 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6987 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6988 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6989 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6990 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6991
6992 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6993
6994 <pre>
6995   count MIME type
6996   ----- -----------------------
6997      32 text/plain
6998      30 audio/mpeg
6999      29 image/png
7000      28 image/jpeg
7001      27 application/ogg
7002      26 audio/x-mp3
7003      25 image/tiff
7004      25 image/gif
7005      22 image/bmp
7006      22 audio/x-wav
7007      20 audio/x-flac
7008      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7009      18 video/x-ms-asf
7010      18 audio/x-musepack
7011      18 audio/x-mpeg
7012      18 application/x-ogg
7013      17 video/mpeg
7014      17 audio/x-scpls
7015      17 audio/ogg
7016      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7017 </pre>
7018
7019 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
7020
7021 <pre>
7022   count MIME type
7023   ----- -----------------------
7024      33 text/plain
7025      32 image/png
7026      32 image/jpeg
7027      29 audio/mpeg
7028      27 image/gif
7029      26 image/tiff
7030      26 application/ogg
7031      25 audio/x-mp3
7032      22 image/bmp
7033      21 audio/x-wav
7034      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7035      19 audio/x-mpeg
7036      18 video/mpeg
7037      18 audio/x-scpls
7038      18 audio/x-flac
7039      18 application/x-ogg
7040      17 video/x-ms-asf
7041      17 text/html
7042      17 audio/x-musepack
7043      16 image/x-xbitmap
7044 </pre>
7045
7046 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
7047
7048 <pre>
7049   count MIME type
7050   ----- -----------------------
7051      31 text/plain
7052      31 image/png
7053      31 image/jpeg
7054      29 audio/mpeg
7055      28 application/ogg
7056      27 image/gif
7057      26 image/tiff
7058      26 audio/x-mp3
7059      23 audio/x-wav
7060      22 image/bmp
7061      21 audio/x-flac
7062      20 audio/x-mpegurl
7063      19 audio/x-mpeg
7064      18 video/x-ms-asf
7065      18 video/mpeg
7066      18 audio/x-scpls
7067      18 application/x-ogg
7068      17 audio/x-musepack
7069      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7070      16 video/x-msvideo
7071 </pre>
7072
7073 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
7074 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
7075 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
7076 issues.</p>
7077
7078 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
7079 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
7080
7081       </div>
7082       <div class="tags">
7083
7084
7085         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>.
7086
7087
7088       </div>
7089     </div>
7090     <div class="padding"></div>
7091
7092     <div class="entry">
7093       <div class="title">
7094         <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>
7095       </div>
7096       <div class="date">
7097         15th January 2013
7098       </div>
7099       <div class="body">
7100         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
7101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
7102 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
7103 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
7104 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
7105 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
7106 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
7107 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
7108 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
7109 packages.</p>
7110
7111 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7112 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7113 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7114 modalias.</p>
7115
7116 <p><blockquote>
7117 Package: package-name
7118 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
7119 </blockquote></p>
7120
7121 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7122 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
7123
7124 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7125 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
7126
7127 <p><blockquote>
7128 Package: cheese
7129 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
7130 </blockquote></p>
7131
7132 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7133 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
7134
7135 <p><blockquote>
7136 Package: pcmciautils
7137 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7138 </blockquote></p>
7139
7140 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7141 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
7142
7143 <p><blockquote>
7144 Package: colorhug-client
7145 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
7146 </blockquote></p>
7147
7148 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
7149 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
7150 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
7151
7152 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
7153 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
7154 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
7155 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
7156 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
7157 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
7158 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
7159 Raring.</p>
7160
7161 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
7162 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
7163 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
7164 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
7165 try the
7166 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
7167 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
7168 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
7169 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
7170
7171 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
7172 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
7173
7174 <p><blockquote>
7175 % ./hw-support-lookup
7176 <br>yubikey-personalization
7177 <br>%
7178 </blockquote></p>
7179
7180 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
7181 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
7182
7183 <p><blockquote>
7184 % ./hw-support-lookup
7185 <br>pcmciautils
7186 <br>%
7187 </blockquote></p>
7188
7189 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
7190 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
7191 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
7192
7193 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
7194 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
7195 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
7196 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
7197 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
7198 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
7199 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
7200 see if it work.</p>
7201
7202 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7203 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7204 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7205 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7206
7207       </div>
7208       <div class="tags">
7209
7210
7211         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7212
7213
7214       </div>
7215     </div>
7216     <div class="padding"></div>
7217
7218     <div class="entry">
7219       <div class="title">
7220         <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>
7221       </div>
7222       <div class="date">
7223         14th January 2013
7224       </div>
7225       <div class="body">
7226         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
7227 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
7228 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
7229 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
7230 in
7231 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7232 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
7233
7234 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
7235
7236 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
7237 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
7238 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
7239 &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;,
7240 &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
7241 &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;.
7242
7243 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
7244 this shell script:</p>
7245
7246 <pre>
7247 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
7248 </pre>
7249
7250 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
7251 using modinfo:</p>
7252
7253 <pre>
7254 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
7255 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
7256 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
7257 %
7258 </pre>
7259
7260 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
7261
7262 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
7263 Bridge memory controller:</p>
7264
7265 <p><blockquote>
7266 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
7267 </blockquote></p>
7268
7269 <p>This represent these values:</p>
7270
7271 <pre>
7272  v   00008086  (vendor)
7273  d   00002770  (device)
7274  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
7275  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
7276  bc  06        (bus class)
7277  sc  00        (bus subclass)
7278  i   00        (interface)
7279 </pre>
7280
7281 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
7282 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
7283 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
7284 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
7285
7286 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
7287 means.</p>
7288
7289 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
7290
7291 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
7292 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
7293
7294 <p><blockquote>
7295 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
7296 </blockquote></p>
7297
7298 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
7299
7300 <pre>
7301  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
7302  p    0001  (device product)
7303  d    0206  (bcddevice)
7304  dc     09  (device class)
7305  dsc    00  (device subclass)
7306  dp     00  (device protocol)
7307  ic     09  (interface class)
7308  isc    00  (interface subclass)
7309  ip     00  (interface protocol)
7310 </pre>
7311
7312 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
7313 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
7314 these alias entries show up:</p>
7315
7316 <p><blockquote>
7317 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
7318 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
7319 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
7320 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
7321 </blockquote></p>
7322
7323 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
7324 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
7325 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
7326
7327 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
7328
7329 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
7330 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
7331
7332 <p><blockquote>
7333 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7334 </blockquote></p>
7335
7336 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
7337
7338 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
7339
7340 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
7341 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
7342 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
7343
7344 <p><blockquote>
7345 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
7346 </blockquote></p>
7347
7348 <p>The values present are</p>
7349
7350 <pre>
7351  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
7352  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
7353  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
7354  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
7355  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
7356  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
7357  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
7358  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
7359  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
7360  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
7361  ct   10             (chassis type)
7362  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
7363 </pre>
7364
7365 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
7366 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
7367
7368 <pre>
7369   3 Desktop
7370   4 Low Profile Desktop
7371   5 Pizza Box
7372   6 Mini Tower
7373   7 Tower
7374   8 Portable
7375   9 Laptop
7376  10 Notebook
7377  11 Hand Held
7378  12 Docking Station
7379  13 All In One
7380  14 Sub Notebook
7381  15 Space-saving
7382  16 Lunch Box
7383  17 Main Server Chassis
7384  18 Expansion Chassis
7385  19 Sub Chassis
7386  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
7387  21 Peripheral Chassis
7388  22 RAID Chassis
7389  23 Rack Mount Chassis
7390  24 Sealed-case PC
7391  25 Multi-system
7392  26 CompactPCI
7393  27 AdvancedTCA
7394  28 Blade
7395  29 Blade Enclosing
7396 </pre>
7397
7398 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7399 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7400 claim it is a desktop.</p>
7401
7402 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
7403
7404 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
7405 test machine:</p>
7406
7407 <p><blockquote>
7408 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7409 </blockquote></p>
7410
7411 <p>The values present are</p>
7412
7413 <pre>
7414   ty  01  (type)
7415   pr  00  (prototype)
7416   id  00  (id)
7417   ex  00  (extra)
7418 </pre>
7419
7420 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
7421 the valid values are.</p>
7422
7423 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
7424
7425 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7426 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7427 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7428 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7429 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
7430 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7431 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
7432
7433 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
7434
7435 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7436 one can use the following shell script:</p>
7437
7438 <pre>
7439   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
7440     echo "$id" ; \
7441     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
7442   done
7443 </pre>
7444
7445 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
7446 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
7447
7448 <pre>
7449   acpi:ACPI0003:
7450     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
7451   acpi:device:
7452   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
7453   acpi:IBM0068:
7454     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
7455     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
7456     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
7457     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
7458   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7459     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
7460     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
7461     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
7462   [...]
7463 </pre>
7464
7465 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7466 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7467 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7468 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7469
7470 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
7471 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
7472 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
7473
7474       </div>
7475       <div class="tags">
7476
7477
7478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7479
7480
7481       </div>
7482     </div>
7483     <div class="padding"></div>
7484
7485     <div class="entry">
7486       <div class="title">
7487         <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>
7488       </div>
7489       <div class="date">
7490         10th January 2013
7491       </div>
7492       <div class="body">
7493         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
7494 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
7495 Launcher and updated the Debian package
7496 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
7497 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
7498 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
7499 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
7500 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
7501 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
7502 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
7503 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7504 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
7505 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7506 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
7507 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7508 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
7509 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
7510 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
7511
7512       </div>
7513       <div class="tags">
7514
7515
7516         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7517
7518
7519       </div>
7520     </div>
7521     <div class="padding"></div>
7522
7523     <div class="entry">
7524       <div class="title">
7525         <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>
7526       </div>
7527       <div class="date">
7528          9th January 2013
7529       </div>
7530       <div class="body">
7531         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7532 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7533 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7534 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7535 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7536 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7537 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7538 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7539 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7540 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
7541 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
7542
7543 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
7544 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
7545 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
7546 simple:
7547
7548 <ul>
7549
7550 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7551   starting when a user log in.</li>
7552
7553 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7554   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
7555
7556 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7557   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7558   packages.</li>
7559
7560 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7561   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
7562
7563 </ul>
7564
7565 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7566 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7567 discover database to find packages and
7568 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
7569 packages.</p>
7570
7571 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7572 draft package is now checked into
7573 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7574 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
7575 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
7576 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7577 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7578 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
7579 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
7580 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7581 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
7582 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
7583 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
7584 because of the freeze).</p>
7585
7586 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7587 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7588 inserted):</p>
7589
7590 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
7591
7592 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7593 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
7594 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
7595
7596 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7597 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7598 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
7599 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7600 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7601 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7602 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
7603
7604 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7605 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
7606 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
7607 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7608 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
7609 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
7610 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7611 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
7612 not be installed?</p>
7613
7614 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7615 please send me an email. :)</p>
7616
7617       </div>
7618       <div class="tags">
7619
7620
7621         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7622
7623
7624       </div>
7625     </div>
7626     <div class="padding"></div>
7627
7628     <div class="entry">
7629       <div class="title">
7630         <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>
7631       </div>
7632       <div class="date">
7633          2nd January 2013
7634       </div>
7635       <div class="body">
7636         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7637 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7638 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7639 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7640 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7641 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7642 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
7643 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7644 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7645 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
7646
7647 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
7648 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
7649 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
7650
7651       </div>
7652       <div class="tags">
7653
7654
7655         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>.
7656
7657
7658       </div>
7659     </div>
7660     <div class="padding"></div>
7661
7662     <div class="entry">
7663       <div class="title">
7664         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7665       </div>
7666       <div class="date">
7667         28th December 2012
7668       </div>
7669       <div class="body">
7670         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
7671 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7672 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
7673 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
7674 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
7675 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
7676 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
7677 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
7678 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
7679 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
7680 followed by many others. :)</p>
7681
7682 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
7683 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
7684 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
7685 you want to donate to the project.</p>
7686
7687       </div>
7688       <div class="tags">
7689
7690
7691         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7692
7693
7694       </div>
7695     </div>
7696     <div class="padding"></div>
7697
7698     <div class="entry">
7699       <div class="title">
7700         <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>
7701       </div>
7702       <div class="date">
7703         25th December 2012
7704       </div>
7705       <div class="body">
7706         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7707 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
7708
7709 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
7710 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7711 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7712 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7713 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
7714 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7715 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7716 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
7717 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7718 name.</p>
7719
7720 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7721 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7722 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
7723
7724 <blockquote><pre>
7725 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7726 cd bitcoin
7727 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7728 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7729 </pre></blockquote>
7730
7731 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7732 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7733 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7734 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7735 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7736 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7737 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7738 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7739 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
7740
7741 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7742 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7743 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7744
7745       </div>
7746       <div class="tags">
7747
7748
7749         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>.
7750
7751
7752       </div>
7753     </div>
7754     <div class="padding"></div>
7755
7756     <div class="entry">
7757       <div class="title">
7758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
7759       </div>
7760       <div class="date">
7761         21st December 2012
7762       </div>
7763       <div class="body">
7764         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7765 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
7766 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7767 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7768 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7769 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7770 is now maintained by a
7771 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7772 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7773 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7774 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7775 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7776 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7777 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7778 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7779 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7780 Corallo in a
7781 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7782 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7783 Debian package.</p>
7784
7785 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7786 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7787 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7788 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7789 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7790 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7791 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7792 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7793 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7794 new version to unstable.
7795
7796 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7797 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7798 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7799 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7800 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7801 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7802 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7803 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7804 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7805 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7806 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7807 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7808 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7809 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7810 have not tested them.</p>
7811
7812 <p>My
7813 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7814 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7815 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7816 years ago, as can be
7817 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7818 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7819 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7820 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7821 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7822 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7823 the same address as last time,
7824 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7825
7826       </div>
7827       <div class="tags">
7828
7829
7830         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>.
7831
7832
7833       </div>
7834     </div>
7835     <div class="padding"></div>
7836
7837     <div class="entry">
7838       <div class="title">
7839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
7840       </div>
7841       <div class="date">
7842         18th December 2012
7843       </div>
7844       <div class="body">
7845         <p>A few days ago I came across
7846 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
7847 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
7848 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
7849 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
7850 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
7851 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
7852 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
7853 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
7854 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
7855
7856 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
7857 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
7858 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
7859 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
7860
7861 <blockquote><pre>
7862 2004-05-27 Book Store
7863       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
7864       Liabilities:Visa
7865 </pre></blockquote>
7866
7867 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
7868 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
7869 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
7870 Spang</a>,
7871 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
7872 Keen</a>,
7873 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
7874 Cantino</a> and
7875 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
7876 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
7877 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
7878 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
7879 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
7880
7881 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
7882 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
7883 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
7884 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
7885 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
7886
7887 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
7888 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
7889 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
7890 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
7891 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
7892 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
7893 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
7894 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
7895 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
7896
7897       </div>
7898       <div class="tags">
7899
7900
7901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7902
7903
7904       </div>
7905     </div>
7906     <div class="padding"></div>
7907
7908     <div class="entry">
7909       <div class="title">
7910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
7911       </div>
7912       <div class="date">
7913          6th December 2012
7914       </div>
7915       <div class="body">
7916         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
7917 Oslo</a>, we use the
7918 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
7919 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
7920 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
7921 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
7922 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
7923 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
7924 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
7925 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
7926 Python.</p>
7927
7928 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
7929 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
7930 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
7931 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
7932 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
7933 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
7934
7935 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
7936 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
7937 user currently logged in:</p>
7938
7939 <blockquote><pre>
7940 #!/usr/bin/env python
7941 import getpass
7942 import xmlrpclib
7943 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
7944 username = getpass.getuser()
7945 password = getpass.getpass()
7946 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
7947 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
7948 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
7949 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
7950 result = server.logout(sessionid)
7951 print result
7952 </pre></blockquote>
7953
7954 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
7955 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
7956
7957       </div>
7958       <div class="tags">
7959
7960
7961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
7962
7963
7964       </div>
7965     </div>
7966     <div class="padding"></div>
7967
7968     <div class="entry">
7969       <div class="title">
7970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
7971       </div>
7972       <div class="date">
7973         17th November 2012
7974       </div>
7975       <div class="body">
7976         <p>While working on a
7977 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
7978 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
7979 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
7980 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
7981 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
7982 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
7983
7984 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
7985 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
7986 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
7987 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
7988 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
7989 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
7990 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
7991 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
7992 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
7993 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
7994 arguments.</p>
7995
7996 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
7997 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
7998 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
7999 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
8000 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
8001 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
8002 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
8003 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
8004
8005 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
8006 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
8007 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
8008 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
8009 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
8010 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
8011 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
8012 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
8013 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
8014 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
8015 correct right holder.</p>
8016
8017 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
8018 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
8019 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
8020 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
8021 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
8022 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
8023 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
8024 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
8025 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
8026 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
8027 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
8028 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
8029 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
8030 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
8031
8032 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
8033 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
8034 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
8035
8036 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
8037 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
8038
8039       </div>
8040       <div class="tags">
8041
8042
8043         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8044
8045
8046       </div>
8047     </div>
8048     <div class="padding"></div>
8049
8050     <div class="entry">
8051       <div class="title">
8052         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
8053       </div>
8054       <div class="date">
8055         14th November 2012
8056       </div>
8057       <div class="body">
8058         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
8059 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8060 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
8061 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
8062 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
8063 the people behind the German
8064 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
8065 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
8066 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
8067
8068 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8069
8070 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
8071 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
8072 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
8073
8074 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
8075 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
8076 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
8077 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
8078 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
8079 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
8080
8081 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
8082 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
8083 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
8084 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
8085 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
8086 relationship management and the communication processes in the
8087 project.</p>
8088
8089 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
8090 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
8091 and a yoga teacher.</p>
8092
8093 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8094 project?</strong></p>
8095
8096 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
8097
8098 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
8099 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
8100 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
8101 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
8102 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
8103 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
8104 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
8105 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
8106 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
8107 parents.</p>
8108
8109 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
8110 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
8111 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
8112 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
8113 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
8114 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
8115 Germany.</p>
8116
8117 <p>For information about our school project you can read
8118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
8119 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
8120
8121 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8122 Edu?</strong></p>
8123
8124 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
8125 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
8126
8127 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
8128 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
8129 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
8130 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
8131 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
8132 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
8133 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
8134 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
8135 teachers, parents...</p>
8136
8137 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8138 Edu?</strong></p>
8139
8140 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
8141 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8142
8143 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
8144 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
8145 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
8146 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
8147 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8148
8149 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
8150 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
8151 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
8152 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
8153 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
8154 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
8155 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8156
8157 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8158
8159 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
8160 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
8161 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
8162 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
8163
8164 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8165 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8166
8167 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
8168 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
8169 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
8170 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
8171 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
8172
8173 <ul>
8174
8175 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
8176 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
8177 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
8178
8179 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
8180 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
8181 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
8182 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
8183 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
8184 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
8185 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
8186
8187 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
8188 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
8189 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
8190 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
8191
8192 </ul>
8193
8194       </div>
8195       <div class="tags">
8196
8197
8198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8199
8200
8201       </div>
8202     </div>
8203     <div class="padding"></div>
8204
8205     <div class="entry">
8206       <div class="title">
8207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
8208       </div>
8209       <div class="date">
8210          4th November 2012
8211       </div>
8212       <div class="body">
8213         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
8214 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
8215 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
8216 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
8217 see how a member of the bitcoin community
8218 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
8219 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
8220 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
8221 competition.  My thoughts go to the
8222 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
8223 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
8224 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
8225 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
8226 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
8227
8228 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
8229 that the community already seem to have
8230 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
8231 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
8232 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
8233 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
8234 wealth is available.</p>
8235
8236       </div>
8237       <div class="tags">
8238
8239
8240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8241
8242
8243       </div>
8244     </div>
8245     <div class="padding"></div>
8246
8247     <div class="entry">
8248       <div class="title">
8249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
8250       </div>
8251       <div class="date">
8252         26th October 2012
8253       </div>
8254       <div class="body">
8255         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
8256 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
8257 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
8258 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
8259 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
8260 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
8261 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
8262 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
8263 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
8264 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
8265 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
8266 it every time.</p>
8267
8268 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
8269 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
8270 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
8271 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
8272 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
8273 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
8274 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
8275 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
8276 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
8277 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
8278 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
8279 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
8280
8281 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
8282 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
8283 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
8284 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
8285 article: First the unplanned outage:
8286
8287 <blockquote><pre>
8288 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
8289 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
8290 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
8291 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
8292 Duration:    40 minutes
8293 Scope:       Exchange 2003
8294 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
8295              a cluster failover.
8296
8297 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
8298              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
8299 Technician:  [xxx]
8300 </pre></blockquote>
8301
8302 Next the planned outage:
8303
8304 <blockquote><pre>
8305 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
8306 Severity:    Major (Planned)
8307 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
8308 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
8309 Duration:    10 hours
8310 Scope:       H2 Transport
8311 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
8312              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
8313              4510s.
8314 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
8315              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
8316              connectivity.
8317 Technician:  [xxx]
8318 </pre></blockquote>
8319
8320 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
8321 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
8322 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
8323 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
8324 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
8325 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
8326 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
8327
8328 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
8329 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
8330 university too.  We do register
8331 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
8332 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
8333 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
8334 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
8335 for other sites to consider too?</p>
8336
8337       </div>
8338       <div class="tags">
8339
8340
8341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8342
8343
8344       </div>
8345     </div>
8346     <div class="padding"></div>
8347
8348     <div class="entry">
8349       <div class="title">
8350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
8351       </div>
8352       <div class="date">
8353         22nd October 2012
8354       </div>
8355       <div class="body">
8356         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
8357 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
8358 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
8359 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
8360 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
8361 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
8362 background information is available in Norwegian from
8363 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
8364 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
8365 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
8366 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
8367 willing to
8368 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
8369 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
8370 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
8371 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
8372 sounded like
8373 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
8374 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
8375 later.</p>
8376
8377 <p>And thought this action is
8378 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
8379 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
8380 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
8381 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
8382 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
8383 rights.</p>
8384
8385 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
8386 unacceptable terms.  For example
8387 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
8388 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
8389 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
8390 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
8391 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
8392
8393 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
8394 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
8395 restored the account of the user, as reported by
8396 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
8397 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
8398 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
8399 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
8400 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
8401 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
8402 reading two opinions from
8403 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
8404 Phipps</a> and
8405 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
8406 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
8407 details about the original story.</p>
8408
8409       </div>
8410       <div class="tags">
8411
8412
8413         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
8414
8415
8416       </div>
8417     </div>
8418     <div class="padding"></div>
8419
8420     <div class="entry">
8421       <div class="title">
8422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
8423       </div>
8424       <div class="date">
8425         18th October 2012
8426       </div>
8427       <div class="body">
8428         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
8429 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
8430 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
8431 across a marvellous drawing by
8432 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
8433 visualising some of what is going on.
8434
8435 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
8436 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
8437
8438 <blockquote>
8439 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
8440 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
8441 </blockquote>
8442
8443 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
8444 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
8445 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
8446 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
8447 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
8448 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
8449
8450       </div>
8451       <div class="tags">
8452
8453
8454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8455
8456
8457       </div>
8458     </div>
8459     <div class="padding"></div>
8460
8461     <div class="entry">
8462       <div class="title">
8463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
8464       </div>
8465       <div class="date">
8466         12th October 2012
8467       </div>
8468       <div class="body">
8469         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
8470 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
8471 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
8472 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
8473 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
8474 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
8475 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
8476 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
8477 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
8478 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
8479 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
8480 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
8481 matter".</p>
8482
8483 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
8484 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
8485 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
8486 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
8487 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
8488 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
8489 to argue its side.</p>
8490
8491 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
8492 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
8493 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
8494 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
8495
8496 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
8497 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
8498 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
8499
8500       </div>
8501       <div class="tags">
8502
8503
8504         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
8505
8506
8507       </div>
8508     </div>
8509     <div class="padding"></div>
8510
8511     <div class="entry">
8512       <div class="title">
8513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
8514       </div>
8515       <div class="date">
8516          3rd October 2012
8517       </div>
8518       <div class="body">
8519         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
8520 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
8521 the computer science book collection available in his local
8522 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
8523 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
8524 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
8525 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
8526 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
8527 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
8528 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
8529 recently published books.</p>
8530
8531 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
8532 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
8533 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
8534 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
8535 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
8536 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
8537 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
8538 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
8539 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
8540 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
8541 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
8542 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
8543 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
8544 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
8545 for the library that evening.</p>
8546
8547 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
8548 going to know that for example
8549 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
8550 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
8551 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
8552 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
8553 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
8554 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
8555 book right away.</p>
8556
8557       </div>
8558       <div class="tags">
8559
8560
8561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8562
8563
8564       </div>
8565     </div>
8566     <div class="padding"></div>
8567
8568     <div class="entry">
8569       <div class="title">
8570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
8571       </div>
8572       <div class="date">
8573         23rd September 2012
8574       </div>
8575       <div class="body">
8576         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
8577 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
8578 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
8579 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
8580 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
8581 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
8582
8583 When I started, I
8584 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
8585 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
8586 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
8587 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
8588 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
8589 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
8590 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
8591
8592 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
8593
8594 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
8595 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
8596 the project files currently available from
8597 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8598
8599 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8600 the updated
8601 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8602 and
8603 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8604 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8605 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8606 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8607
8608       </div>
8609       <div class="tags">
8610
8611
8612         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8613
8614
8615       </div>
8616     </div>
8617     <div class="padding"></div>
8618
8619     <div class="entry">
8620       <div class="title">
8621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
8622       </div>
8623       <div class="date">
8624         17th September 2012
8625       </div>
8626       <div class="body">
8627         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
8628 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8629 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
8630 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
8631 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
8632 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
8633 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
8634
8635 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8636
8637 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
8638 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
8639 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
8640 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
8641 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
8642 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
8643 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
8644 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
8645 training is anyway very important</p>
8646
8647 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
8648 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
8649 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
8650 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
8651 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
8652
8653 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8654 project?</strong></p>
8655
8656 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
8657 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
8658 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
8659 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
8660 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
8661 hole.</p>
8662
8663 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8664 Edu?</strong></p>
8665
8666 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
8667 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
8668 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
8669 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
8670 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
8671 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
8672 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
8673 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
8674 hassle.</p>
8675
8676 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8677 Edu?</strong></p>
8678
8679 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
8680 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
8681 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
8682 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
8683 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
8684 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
8685 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
8686 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
8687
8688 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8689
8690 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
8691 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
8692 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
8693 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
8694 has the same...</p>
8695
8696 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
8697 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
8698 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
8699 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
8700
8701 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8702 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8703
8704 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
8705 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
8706 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
8707
8708 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
8709 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
8710 don't.</p>
8711
8712 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
8713 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
8714 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
8715 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
8716 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
8717 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
8718 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
8719
8720       </div>
8721       <div class="tags">
8722
8723
8724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8725
8726
8727       </div>
8728     </div>
8729     <div class="padding"></div>
8730
8731     <div class="entry">
8732       <div class="title">
8733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
8734       </div>
8735       <div class="date">
8736         15th September 2012
8737       </div>
8738       <div class="body">
8739         <p>After the
8740 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
8741 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
8742 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
8743 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
8744 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
8745 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
8746 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
8747 was
8748 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
8749 formal working group should be formed.</p>
8750
8751 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
8752 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
8753 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
8754 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
8755 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
8756 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
8757 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
8758 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
8759
8760 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
8761 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
8762 IETF.</p>
8763
8764       </div>
8765       <div class="tags">
8766
8767
8768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8769
8770
8771       </div>
8772     </div>
8773     <div class="padding"></div>
8774
8775     <div class="entry">
8776       <div class="title">
8777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
8778       </div>
8779       <div class="date">
8780         12th September 2012
8781       </div>
8782       <div class="body">
8783         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
8784 publication of of
8785 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
8786 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
8787 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
8788 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
8789 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
8790 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
8791 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
8792 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
8793 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
8794 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
8795
8796 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
8797 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
8798 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
8799 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
8800
8801 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
8802 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
8803
8804       </div>
8805       <div class="tags">
8806
8807
8808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8809
8810
8811       </div>
8812     </div>
8813     <div class="padding"></div>
8814
8815     <div class="entry">
8816       <div class="title">
8817         <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>
8818       </div>
8819       <div class="date">
8820          7th September 2012
8821       </div>
8822       <div class="body">
8823         <p>As I
8824 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8825 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8826 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8827 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8828 repository for the project</a>.</p>
8829
8830 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8831 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8832 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8833 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
8834
8835 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8836 PostScript formats at
8837 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8838 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
8839
8840       </div>
8841       <div class="tags">
8842
8843
8844         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>.
8845
8846
8847       </div>
8848     </div>
8849     <div class="padding"></div>
8850
8851     <div class="entry">
8852       <div class="title">
8853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
8854       </div>
8855       <div class="date">
8856         23rd August 2012
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="body">
8859         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
8860 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
8861 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
8862 revisit the great site
8863 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
8864 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
8865 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
8866
8867       </div>
8868       <div class="tags">
8869
8870
8871         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8872
8873
8874       </div>
8875     </div>
8876     <div class="padding"></div>
8877
8878     <div class="entry">
8879       <div class="title">
8880         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
8881       </div>
8882       <div class="date">
8883         17th August 2012
8884       </div>
8885       <div class="body">
8886         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
8887 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
8888 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
8889 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
8890 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
8891 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
8892 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
8893 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
8894 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
8895 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
8896 summer I
8897 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
8898 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
8899 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
8900
8901 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
8902 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
8903 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
8904 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
8905 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
8906 progress:</p>
8907
8908 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
8909
8910 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
8911 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
8912 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
8913 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
8914 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
8915 english version of the docbook source.</p>
8916
8917 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
8918 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
8919 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
8920 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
8921 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
8922 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
8923 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
8924 project files currently available from <a
8925 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8926
8927 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8928 the updated
8929 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8930 and
8931 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8932 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8933 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8934 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8935
8936       </div>
8937       <div class="tags">
8938
8939
8940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8941
8942
8943       </div>
8944     </div>
8945     <div class="padding"></div>
8946
8947     <div class="entry">
8948       <div class="title">
8949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
8950       </div>
8951       <div class="date">
8952         10th August 2012
8953       </div>
8954       <div class="body">
8955         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
8956 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
8957 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
8958 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
8959 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
8960 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
8961 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
8962 case for the language
8963 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
8964 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
8965
8966 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
8967 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
8968 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
8969 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
8970 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
8971
8972 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
8973 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
8974 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
8975 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
8976 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
8977 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
8978 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
8979 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
8980 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
8981 alias for 'nb'.</p>
8982
8983 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
8984 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
8985 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
8986 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
8987 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
8988 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
8989 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
8990 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
8991 at the same time. :(</p>
8992
8993 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
8994 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
8995 processors. :(</p>
8996
8997 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
8998
8999       </div>
9000       <div class="tags">
9001
9002
9003         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9004
9005
9006       </div>
9007     </div>
9008     <div class="padding"></div>
9009
9010     <div class="entry">
9011       <div class="title">
9012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
9013       </div>
9014       <div class="date">
9015         31st July 2012
9016       </div>
9017       <div class="body">
9018         <p>I tried to send this text to the
9019 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
9020 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
9021 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
9022 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
9023 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
9024 out.</p>
9025
9026 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
9027 learning curve at the moment.</p>
9028
9029 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
9030 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
9031 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
9032 available from
9033 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
9034 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
9035 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
9036 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
9037 Squeeze.</p>
9038
9039 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
9040 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
9041 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
9042 problems.</p>
9043
9044 <ul>
9045
9046 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
9047    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
9048    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
9049    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
9050    index references spanning several pages (See
9051    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
9052    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
9053    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
9054
9055 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
9056    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
9057    #683163</a>).</li>
9058
9059 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
9060    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
9061    footnote and text body, see
9062    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
9063    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
9064    refs listed are not right).</li>
9065
9066 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
9067
9068 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
9069    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
9070
9071 </ul>
9072
9073 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
9074 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
9075 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
9076
9077 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
9078
9079       </div>
9080       <div class="tags">
9081
9082
9083         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9084
9085
9086       </div>
9087     </div>
9088     <div class="padding"></div>
9089
9090     <div class="entry">
9091       <div class="title">
9092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
9093       </div>
9094       <div class="date">
9095         21st July 2012
9096       </div>
9097       <div class="body">
9098         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
9099 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
9100 norwegian version</a> of the book
9101 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9102 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
9103 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
9104 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
9105 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9106
9107 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
9108 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
9109 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
9110 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
9111 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
9112 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
9113 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
9114 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
9115 print. :)</p>
9116
9117 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
9118 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
9119 language.</p>
9120
9121       </div>
9122       <div class="tags">
9123
9124
9125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9126
9127
9128       </div>
9129     </div>
9130     <div class="padding"></div>
9131
9132     <div class="entry">
9133       <div class="title">
9134         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="date">
9137         16th July 2012
9138       </div>
9139       <div class="body">
9140         <p>I am currently working on a
9141 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
9142 to translate</a> the book
9143 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
9144 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
9145 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
9146 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
9147 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
9148 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
9149 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9150
9151 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
9152 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
9153 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
9154 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
9155 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
9156 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
9157 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
9158 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
9159 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
9160
9161       </div>
9162       <div class="tags">
9163
9164
9165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9166
9167
9168       </div>
9169     </div>
9170     <div class="padding"></div>
9171
9172     <div class="entry">
9173       <div class="title">
9174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
9175       </div>
9176       <div class="date">
9177          9th July 2012
9178       </div>
9179       <div class="body">
9180         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9181 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
9182 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
9183 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
9184 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
9185 to adjust and scale the just released
9186 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9187 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
9188 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
9189
9190 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9191
9192 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
9193 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
9194 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
9195 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
9196 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
9197 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
9198 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
9199 perspective when working with IT.</p>
9200
9201 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9202 project?</strong></p>
9203
9204 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
9205 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
9206 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
9207 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
9208 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
9209 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
9210
9211 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9212 Edu?</strong></p>
9213
9214 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
9215 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
9216 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
9217 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
9218 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
9219 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
9220 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
9221 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
9222 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
9223 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
9224 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
9225 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
9226 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
9227 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
9228 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
9229 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
9230 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
9231 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
9232 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
9233 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
9234 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
9235 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
9236 quicker to update.
9237
9238 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9239 Edu?</strong></p>
9240
9241 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
9242 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
9243 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
9244 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
9245 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
9246 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
9247
9248 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
9249 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
9250 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
9251 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
9252 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
9253 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
9254 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
9255 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
9256 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
9257 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
9258 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
9259 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
9260 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
9261 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
9262 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
9263
9264 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
9265 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
9266 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
9267 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
9268 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
9269 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
9270 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
9271 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
9272
9273 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
9274 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
9275 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
9276 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
9277 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
9278 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
9279 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
9280 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
9281 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
9282 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
9283 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
9284 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
9285 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
9286 sound file.</p>
9287
9288 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
9289 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
9290 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
9291 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
9292 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
9293 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
9294 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
9295 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
9296 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
9297
9298 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9299
9300 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
9301 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
9302 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
9303 )</p>
9304
9305 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9306 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9307
9308 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
9309 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
9310 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
9311 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
9312 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
9313 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
9314 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
9315 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
9316 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
9317 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
9318 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
9319 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
9320 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
9321 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
9322 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
9323
9324 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
9325 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
9326 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
9327 management with Airtime</a>,
9328 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
9329 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
9330 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
9331 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
9332 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
9333
9334       </div>
9335       <div class="tags">
9336
9337
9338         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9339
9340
9341       </div>
9342     </div>
9343     <div class="padding"></div>
9344
9345     <div class="entry">
9346       <div class="title">
9347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
9348       </div>
9349       <div class="date">
9350          8th July 2012
9351       </div>
9352       <div class="body">
9353         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
9354 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
9355 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
9356 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
9357 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
9358 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
9359 Steinberg in his blog post
9360 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
9361 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
9362 spending of your tax money.</p>
9363
9364 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
9365 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
9366 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
9367 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
9368 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
9369 purchases.</p>
9370
9371       </div>
9372       <div class="tags">
9373
9374
9375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9376
9377
9378       </div>
9379     </div>
9380     <div class="padding"></div>
9381
9382     <div class="entry">
9383       <div class="title">
9384         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
9385       </div>
9386       <div class="date">
9387          7th July 2012
9388       </div>
9389       <div class="body">
9390         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9391 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
9392 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
9393 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
9394 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
9395 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
9396 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
9397 receive.  The software is
9398
9399 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
9400 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
9401 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
9402 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
9403 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
9404 Windows</a>.</p>
9405
9406 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
9407 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
9408
9409 <p><ul>
9410
9411   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
9412     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
9413
9414   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
9415     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
9416     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
9417     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
9418     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
9419     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
9420     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
9421     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
9422     </li>
9423
9424   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
9425     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
9426
9427   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
9428     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
9429
9430   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
9431     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
9432
9433   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
9434
9435   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
9436     formats </li>
9437
9438   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
9439     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
9440     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
9441     (as separate sets)</li>
9442
9443   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
9444     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
9445     percentage)</li>
9446
9447   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
9448     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
9449     memory):
9450     <ul>
9451       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
9452       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
9453       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
9454       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
9455       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
9456       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
9457       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
9458       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
9459       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
9460       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
9461           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
9462           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
9463           activity)</li>
9464       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
9465       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
9466     </ul></li>
9467
9468   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
9469     <ul>
9470       <li>Break periods</li>
9471       <li>For teacher(s):
9472         <ul>
9473           <li>Not available periods</li>
9474           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
9475           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
9476           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
9477           <li>Min hours daily</li>
9478           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
9479
9480           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9481             days per week</li>
9482         </ul></li>
9483       <li>For students (sets):
9484         <ul>
9485           <li>Not available periods</li>
9486           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
9487           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
9488           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
9489           <li>Min hours daily</li>
9490           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
9491
9492           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9493             days per week</li>
9494         </ul></li>
9495       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
9496         <ul>
9497           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
9498           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
9499           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
9500           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
9501           <li>End(s) students day</li>
9502           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
9503           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
9504             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
9505           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
9506           <li>Not overlapping</li>
9507           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
9508           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
9509         </ul></li>
9510     </ul></li>
9511
9512   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
9513     <ul>
9514       <li>Room not available periods</li>
9515       <li>For teacher(s):
9516         <ul>
9517           <li>Home room(s)</li>
9518           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
9519           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
9520         </ul>
9521       </li>
9522
9523       <li>For students (sets):
9524         <ul>
9525           <li>Home room(s)</li>
9526           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
9527           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
9528         </ul>
9529       </li>
9530       <li>Preferred room(s):
9531         <ul>
9532           <li>For a subject</li>
9533           <li>For an activity tag</li>
9534           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
9535           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
9536         </ul>
9537       </li>
9538
9539       <li>For a set of activities:
9540         <ul>
9541           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
9542         </ul>
9543       </li>
9544     </ul>
9545   </li>
9546 </ul></p>
9547
9548 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
9549 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
9550 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
9551 manually, check it out.
9552
9553 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
9554 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
9555 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
9556 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
9557 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
9558 section</a>.</p>
9559
9560       </div>
9561       <div class="tags">
9562
9563
9564         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9565
9566
9567       </div>
9568     </div>
9569     <div class="padding"></div>
9570
9571     <div class="entry">
9572       <div class="title">
9573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
9574       </div>
9575       <div class="date">
9576          3rd July 2012
9577       </div>
9578       <div class="body">
9579         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
9580 project (Norwegian version of
9581 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
9582 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
9583 a problem with the municipalities using
9584 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
9585 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
9586 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
9587 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
9588 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
9589 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
9590 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
9591 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
9592 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
9593 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
9594 the From: header.</p>
9595
9596 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
9597 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
9598 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
9599 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
9600 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
9601 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
9602 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
9603 behaviour.</p>
9604
9605 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
9606 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
9607 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
9608 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
9609 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
9610 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
9611 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
9612
9613       </div>
9614       <div class="tags">
9615
9616
9617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9618
9619
9620       </div>
9621     </div>
9622     <div class="padding"></div>
9623
9624     <div class="entry">
9625       <div class="title">
9626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
9627       </div>
9628       <div class="date">
9629         26th June 2012
9630       </div>
9631       <div class="body">
9632         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
9633 another interview with the people behind
9634 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9635 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
9636 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
9637 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
9638 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
9639 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9640 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9641
9642 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9643
9644 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
9645 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
9646 ICT in schools</p>
9647
9648 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9649 project?</strong></p>
9650
9651 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
9652 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
9653 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
9654 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
9655
9656 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9657 Edu?</strong></p>
9658
9659 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
9660 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
9661 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
9662 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
9663
9664 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9665 Edu?</strong></p>
9666
9667 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
9668 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
9669 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
9670 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
9671 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
9672 technologies in school.</p>
9673
9674 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9675
9676 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
9677 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
9678 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
9679
9680 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9681 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9682
9683 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
9684 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
9685 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
9686 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
9687
9688 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
9689 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
9690 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
9691
9692 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
9693 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
9694 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
9695 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
9696 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
9697 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
9698 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
9699 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
9700 working there.</p>
9701
9702       </div>
9703       <div class="tags">
9704
9705
9706         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9707
9708
9709       </div>
9710     </div>
9711     <div class="padding"></div>
9712
9713     <div class="entry">
9714       <div class="title">
9715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9716       </div>
9717       <div class="date">
9718         24th June 2012
9719       </div>
9720       <div class="body">
9721         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
9722 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
9723 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
9724 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
9725 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
9726 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
9727 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
9728 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
9729 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
9730 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
9731 missing in my book.</p>
9732
9733 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
9734 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
9735 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
9736 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
9737 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
9738 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
9739 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
9740
9741       </div>
9742       <div class="tags">
9743
9744
9745         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>.
9746
9747
9748       </div>
9749     </div>
9750     <div class="padding"></div>
9751
9752     <div class="entry">
9753       <div class="title">
9754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
9755       </div>
9756       <div class="date">
9757         11th June 2012
9758       </div>
9759       <div class="body">
9760         <p>During my work on
9761 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
9762 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
9763 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
9764 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
9765 explanation.</p>
9766
9767 <p><ul>
9768
9769 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
9770 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
9771 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
9772 system depend on tasksel tasks in
9773 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
9774 installation.</li>
9775
9776 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
9777 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
9778 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
9779 at least try to enable it for these services:
9780 <ul>
9781
9782   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
9783     quotas.</li>
9784   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
9785   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
9786   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
9787   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
9788   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
9789
9790 </ul></li>
9791
9792 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
9793 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
9794 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
9795 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
9796
9797 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
9798 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
9799 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
9800
9801 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
9802 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
9803 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
9804 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
9805 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
9806 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
9807
9808 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
9809 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
9810 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
9811 in Wheezy.
9812
9813 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
9814 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
9815 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
9816
9817 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
9818 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
9819 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
9820 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
9821
9822 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
9823 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
9824 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
9825 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
9826
9827 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
9828 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
9829 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
9830
9831 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
9832 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
9833 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
9834
9835 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
9836 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
9837 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
9838 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
9839 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
9840
9841 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
9842 <ul>
9843
9844 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
9845 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
9846 <li>and probably more?</li>
9847 </ul></li>
9848
9849 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
9850 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
9851 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
9852 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
9853 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
9854 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
9855 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
9856 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
9857
9858
9859 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
9860 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
9861 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
9862 use.</li>
9863
9864 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
9865 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
9866 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
9867 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
9868 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
9869
9870 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
9871 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
9872 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
9873 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
9874 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
9875 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
9876
9877 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
9878 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
9879 There are at least three implementations,
9880 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
9881 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
9882 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
9883 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
9884 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
9885 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
9886 given room.</li>
9887
9888 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
9889 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
9890 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
9891 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
9892 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
9893 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
9894 investigated.</li>
9895
9896 </ul></p>
9897
9898 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
9899 version.</p>
9900
9901       </div>
9902       <div class="tags">
9903
9904
9905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9906
9907
9908       </div>
9909     </div>
9910     <div class="padding"></div>
9911
9912     <div class="entry">
9913       <div class="title">
9914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
9915       </div>
9916       <div class="date">
9917          9th June 2012
9918       </div>
9919       <div class="body">
9920         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
9921 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
9922 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
9923 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
9924 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
9925 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
9926 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
9927 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
9928 be willing to pay for.</p>
9929
9930 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
9931 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
9932 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
9933 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
9934 Orwell</a>.</p>
9935
9936       </div>
9937       <div class="tags">
9938
9939
9940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9941
9942
9943       </div>
9944     </div>
9945     <div class="padding"></div>
9946
9947     <div class="entry">
9948       <div class="title">
9949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
9950       </div>
9951       <div class="date">
9952          6th June 2012
9953       </div>
9954       <div class="body">
9955         <p>A few days ago
9956 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
9957 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
9958 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
9959 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
9960 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
9961 code for HP, Dell and IBM
9962 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
9963 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
9964 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
9965 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
9966 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
9967
9968 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
9969 output:
9970
9971 <blockquote><pre>
9972 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
9973 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
9974 %
9975 </pre></blockquote>
9976
9977 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
9978 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
9979 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
9980
9981       </div>
9982       <div class="tags">
9983
9984
9985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9986
9987
9988       </div>
9989     </div>
9990     <div class="padding"></div>
9991
9992     <div class="entry">
9993       <div class="title">
9994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
9995       </div>
9996       <div class="date">
9997          2nd June 2012
9998       </div>
9999       <div class="body">
10000         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
10001 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10002 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
10003 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
10004 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10005 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10006
10007 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10008
10009 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
10010 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
10011 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
10012 by Angela).</p>
10013
10014 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
10015 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
10016 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
10017 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
10018 becoming an osteopath.</p>
10019
10020 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
10021 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
10022 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
10023 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
10024 skills with communication skills.</p>
10025
10026 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10027 project?</strong></p>
10028
10029 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
10030 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
10031 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
10032 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
10033 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
10034
10035 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
10036 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
10037 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
10038 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
10039 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
10040 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
10041 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
10042 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
10043 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
10044
10045 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
10046 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
10047 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
10048
10049 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
10050
10051 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
10052 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
10053 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
10054 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
10055 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
10056 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
10057 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
10058 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
10059 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
10060 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
10061 point.</p>
10062
10063 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
10064 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
10065 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
10066 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
10067 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
10068 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
10069
10070 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
10071 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
10072 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
10073 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
10074 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
10075 spare time.</p>
10076
10077 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
10078 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
10079 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
10080 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
10081 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
10082
10083 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
10084 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
10085 avoidance do exist.</p>
10086
10087 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
10088 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
10089 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
10090 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
10091 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
10092 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
10093 and probably a gain for all.</p>
10094
10095 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10096 Edu?</strong></p>
10097
10098 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
10099 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
10100 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
10101 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
10102 project communication, honest communication within the group of
10103 developers, etc.</p>
10104
10105 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10106 Edu?</strong></p>
10107
10108 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
10109
10110 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
10111 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
10112 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
10113 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
10114 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
10115 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
10116 contribute).</p>
10117
10118 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
10119 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
10120 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
10121 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
10122 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
10123 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
10124 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
10125 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
10126 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
10127 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
10128
10129 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10130
10131 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
10132
10133 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
10134 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
10135 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
10136
10137 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
10138 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
10139 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
10140 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
10141
10142 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
10143 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
10144 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
10145 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
10146 whiteboard.</p>
10147
10148 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
10149
10150 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10151 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10152
10153 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
10154 enrol people.</p>
10155
10156       </div>
10157       <div class="tags">
10158
10159
10160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10161
10162
10163       </div>
10164     </div>
10165     <div class="padding"></div>
10166
10167     <div class="entry">
10168       <div class="title">
10169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
10170       </div>
10171       <div class="date">
10172          1st June 2012
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="body">
10175         <p>A few years ago I wrote
10176 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
10177 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
10178 I have learned from colleges here at the
10179 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
10180 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
10181 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
10182 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
10183 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
10184
10185 <p><pre>
10186 use strict;
10187 use warnings;
10188 use SOAP::Lite;
10189 use Data::Dumper;
10190 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
10191 my $App = 'test';
10192 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
10193 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
10194 my $s = SOAP::Lite
10195     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
10196     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
10197     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
10198     ;
10199 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
10200     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
10201     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
10202     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
10203 );
10204 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
10205 </pre></p>
10206
10207 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
10208
10209 <p><pre>
10210 $VAR1 = {
10211           'Asset' => {
10212                      'Entitlements' => {
10213                                        'EntitlementData' => [
10214                                                             {
10215                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10216                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
10217                                                               'Provider' => '',
10218                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10219                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10220                                                             },
10221                                                             {
10222                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10223                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
10224                                                               'Provider' => '',
10225                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10226                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10227                                                             },
10228                                                             {
10229                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10230                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
10231                                                               'Provider' => '',
10232                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10233                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10234                                                             }
10235                                                           ]
10236                                      },
10237                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
10238                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
10239                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
10240                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
10241                                           'Buid' => '2323',
10242                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
10243                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
10244                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
10245                                         }
10246                    }
10247         };
10248 </pre></p>
10249
10250 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
10251 service outside the
10252 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
10253 documentation</a>, and according to
10254 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
10255 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
10256 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
10257
10258 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
10259 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
10260
10261       </div>
10262       <div class="tags">
10263
10264
10265         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10266
10267
10268       </div>
10269     </div>
10270     <div class="padding"></div>
10271
10272     <div class="entry">
10273       <div class="title">
10274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
10275       </div>
10276       <div class="date">
10277         31st May 2012
10278       </div>
10279       <div class="body">
10280         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
10281 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
10282 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
10283 running Debian Squeeze, where
10284 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
10285 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
10286 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
10287 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
10288 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
10289 another day.</p>
10290
10291 <p>After calibration, I get a
10292 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
10293 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
10294 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
10295 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
10296 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
10297 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
10298 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
10299 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
10300 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
10301 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
10302 and a simple</p>
10303
10304 <p><pre>
10305 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
10306 </pre></p>
10307
10308 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
10309 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
10310 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
10311 enough for now.</p>
10312
10313       </div>
10314       <div class="tags">
10315
10316
10317         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10318
10319
10320       </div>
10321     </div>
10322     <div class="padding"></div>
10323
10324     <div class="entry">
10325       <div class="title">
10326         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
10327       </div>
10328       <div class="date">
10329         27th May 2012
10330       </div>
10331       <div class="body">
10332         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
10333 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10334 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
10335 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
10336 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
10337 since then, helping to make sure the
10338 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10339 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
10340
10341 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10342
10343 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
10344 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
10345 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
10346 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
10347 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
10348 our computer network.</p>
10349
10350 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
10351 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
10352 (4 months).</p>
10353
10354 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10355 project?</strong></p>
10356
10357 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
10358 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
10359 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
10360 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
10361 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
10362 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
10363 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
10364 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
10365 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
10366 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
10367 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
10368 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
10369 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
10370 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
10371
10372 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10373 Edu?</strong></p>
10374
10375 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
10376 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
10377 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
10378 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
10379 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
10380 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
10381 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
10382 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
10383
10384 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10385 Edu?</strong></p>
10386
10387 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
10388 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
10389 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
10390 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
10391 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
10392 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
10393 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
10394 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
10395 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
10396 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
10397 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
10398 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
10399
10400 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10401
10402 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
10403 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
10404 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
10405
10406 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10407 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10408
10409 <p><ol>
10410
10411 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
10412 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
10413 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
10414 developing.</li>
10415
10416 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
10417 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
10418 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
10419 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
10420 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
10421
10422 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
10423 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
10424 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
10425
10426 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
10427 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
10428 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
10429 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
10430
10431 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
10432 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
10433 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
10434
10435 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
10436
10437 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
10438 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
10439 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
10440 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
10441
10442 </ol></p>
10443
10444       </div>
10445       <div class="tags">
10446
10447
10448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10449
10450
10451       </div>
10452     </div>
10453     <div class="padding"></div>
10454
10455     <div class="entry">
10456       <div class="title">
10457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
10458       </div>
10459       <div class="date">
10460         26th May 2012
10461       </div>
10462       <div class="body">
10463         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
10464 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
10465 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
10466 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
10467 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
10468
10469 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
10470 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
10471 comment:</p>
10472
10473 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
10474 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
10475 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
10476 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
10477 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
10478 </blockquote></p>
10479
10480 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
10481 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
10482 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
10483 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
10484 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
10485 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
10486 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
10487 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
10488 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
10489 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
10490 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
10491 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
10492 of wasted effort.</p>
10493
10494 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
10495 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
10496 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
10497
10498 <p>See
10499 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
10500 and
10501 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
10502 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
10503 </blockquote></p>
10504
10505       </div>
10506       <div class="tags">
10507
10508
10509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10510
10511
10512       </div>
10513     </div>
10514     <div class="padding"></div>
10515
10516     <div class="entry">
10517       <div class="title">
10518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
10519       </div>
10520       <div class="date">
10521         18th May 2012
10522       </div>
10523       <div class="body">
10524         <p>In january, I
10525 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
10526 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
10527 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
10528 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
10529 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
10530 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
10531 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
10532 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
10533 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
10534 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
10535
10536 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
10537 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
10538 drivers. :)</p>
10539
10540       </div>
10541       <div class="tags">
10542
10543
10544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10545
10546
10547       </div>
10548     </div>
10549     <div class="padding"></div>
10550
10551     <div class="entry">
10552       <div class="title">
10553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
10554       </div>
10555       <div class="date">
10556         13th May 2012
10557       </div>
10558       <div class="body">
10559         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
10560 publish another interview with the people behind
10561 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
10562 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
10563 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
10564 details get right before release.
10565
10566 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10567
10568 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
10569 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
10570 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
10571 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
10572 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
10573 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
10574 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
10575 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
10576
10577 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
10578 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
10579 home since 2006.</p>
10580
10581 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10582 project?</strong></p>
10583
10584 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
10585 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
10586 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
10587 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
10588 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
10589 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
10590
10591 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
10592 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
10593 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
10594 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
10595 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
10596 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
10597 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
10598 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
10599 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
10600 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
10601 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
10602 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
10603 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
10604 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
10605 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
10606 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
10607
10608 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10609 Edu?</strong></p>
10610
10611 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
10612 for me as today.</p>
10613
10614 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
10615
10616 <p><ul>
10617
10618 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
10619 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
10620
10621 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
10622 cost.</li>
10623
10624 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
10625 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
10626 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
10627 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
10628 server</li>
10629
10630 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
10631 school.</li>
10632
10633 </ul></p>
10634
10635 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
10636 came up in this way:</p>
10637
10638 <p><ul>
10639
10640 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
10641 now.</li>
10642
10643 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
10644 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
10645 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
10646
10647 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
10648 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
10649 interfaces used in the past.</li>
10650
10651 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
10652 different needs.</li>
10653
10654 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
10655
10656 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
10657 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
10658 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
10659
10660 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
10661 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
10662
10663 </ul></p>
10664
10665 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10666 Edu?</strong></p>
10667
10668 <p><ul>
10669
10670 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
10671 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
10672 whole municipality areas.</li>
10673
10674 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
10675 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
10676 politicians.</li>
10677
10678 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
10679
10680 </ul></p>
10681
10682 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10683
10684 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
10685 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
10686 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
10687 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
10688 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
10689 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
10690
10691 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
10692 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
10693 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
10694 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
10695 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
10696
10697 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10698 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10699
10700 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
10701 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
10702 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
10703
10704       </div>
10705       <div class="tags">
10706
10707
10708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10709
10710
10711       </div>
10712     </div>
10713     <div class="padding"></div>
10714
10715     <div class="entry">
10716       <div class="title">
10717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
10718       </div>
10719       <div class="date">
10720         30th April 2012
10721       </div>
10722       <div class="body">
10723         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
10724 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
10725
10726 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
10727 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
10728 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
10729 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
10730 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
10731 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
10732 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
10733 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
10734 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
10735 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
10736 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
10737 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
10738 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
10739 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
10740 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
10741 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
10742
10743 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
10744 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
10745 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
10746 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
10747 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
10748 finally found a Danish supplier
10749 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
10750 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
10751 days ago.</p>
10752
10753 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
10754 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
10755 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
10756 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
10757 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
10758 toys.</p>
10759
10760       </div>
10761       <div class="tags">
10762
10763
10764         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10765
10766
10767       </div>
10768     </div>
10769     <div class="padding"></div>
10770
10771     <div class="entry">
10772       <div class="title">
10773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
10774       </div>
10775       <div class="date">
10776         26th April 2012
10777       </div>
10778       <div class="body">
10779         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
10780 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
10781 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
10782 that the video editor application included with
10783 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
10784 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
10785 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
10786
10787 <p><blockquote>
10788 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
10789 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
10790 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
10791 </blockquote></p>
10792
10793 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
10794
10795 <p><blockquote>
10796 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
10797 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
10798 </blockquote></p>
10799
10800 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
10801 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
10802 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
10803 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
10804 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
10805 video.  AMR is
10806 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
10807 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
10808 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
10809 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
10810 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
10811 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
10812 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
10813
10814 <p>I know why I prefer
10815 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
10816 standards</a> also for video.</p>
10817
10818       </div>
10819       <div class="tags">
10820
10821
10822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10823
10824
10825       </div>
10826     </div>
10827     <div class="padding"></div>
10828
10829     <div class="entry">
10830       <div class="title">
10831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
10832       </div>
10833       <div class="date">
10834         19th April 2012
10835       </div>
10836       <div class="body">
10837         <p>Here in Norway, the
10838 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
10839 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
10840 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
10841 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
10842 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
10843 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
10844 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
10845 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
10846 on the same level.</p>
10847
10848 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
10849 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
10850 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
10851 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
10852 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
10853 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
10854 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
10855 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
10856 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
10857 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
10858 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
10859 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
10860 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
10861 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
10862 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
10863 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
10864 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
10865 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
10866
10867 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
10868 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
10869 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
10870 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
10871 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
10872 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
10873 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
10874 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
10875
10876 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
10877 from Simon Phipps
10878 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
10879 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
10880
10881 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
10882 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
10883 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
10884 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
10885 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
10886 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
10887 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
10888 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
10889 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
10890
10891       </div>
10892       <div class="tags">
10893
10894
10895         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10896
10897
10898       </div>
10899     </div>
10900     <div class="padding"></div>
10901
10902     <div class="entry">
10903       <div class="title">
10904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
10905       </div>
10906       <div class="date">
10907         15th April 2012
10908       </div>
10909       <div class="body">
10910         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10911 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
10912 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
10913 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
10914 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
10915 up in the recently released
10916 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
10917 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10918
10919 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10920
10921 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
10922 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
10923 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
10924 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
10925 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
10926 information technology and science/technology.</p>
10927
10928 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10929 project?</strong></p>
10930
10931 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
10932 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
10933 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
10934 contributing.</p>
10935
10936 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10937 Edu?</strong></p>
10938
10939 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
10940 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
10941 Debian Project!</p>
10942
10943 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10944 Edu?</strong></p>
10945
10946 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
10947 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
10948 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
10949 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
10950 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
10951 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
10952 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
10953
10954 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
10955 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
10956
10957 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10958
10959 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
10960 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
10961 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
10962 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
10963
10964 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10965 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10966
10967 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
10968 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
10969 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
10970 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
10971 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
10972 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
10973 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
10974
10975 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
10976 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
10977 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
10978 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
10979 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
10980 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
10981 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
10982 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
10983
10984       </div>
10985       <div class="tags">
10986
10987
10988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10989
10990
10991       </div>
10992     </div>
10993     <div class="padding"></div>
10994
10995     <div class="entry">
10996       <div class="title">
10997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
10998       </div>
10999       <div class="date">
11000          8th April 2012
11001       </div>
11002       <div class="body">
11003         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
11004 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
11005 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
11006 contributor to the
11007 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
11008 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
11009
11010 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11011
11012 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
11013 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
11014
11015 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11016 project?</strong></p>
11017
11018 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
11019 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
11020 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
11021 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
11022 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
11023 "localisation".</p>
11024
11025 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11026 Edu?</strong></p>
11027
11028 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11029 Edu?</strong></p>
11030
11031 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
11032 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
11033 education system.</p>
11034
11035 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
11036 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
11037 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
11038 money on the latest hardware.</p>
11039
11040 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11041
11042 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
11043 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
11044 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
11045
11046 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11047 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11048
11049 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
11050 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
11051 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
11052
11053       </div>
11054       <div class="tags">
11055
11056
11057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11058
11059
11060       </div>
11061     </div>
11062     <div class="padding"></div>
11063
11064     <div class="entry">
11065       <div class="title">
11066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
11067       </div>
11068       <div class="date">
11069          6th April 2012
11070       </div>
11071       <div class="body">
11072         <p>Recently I have spent time with
11073 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
11074 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11075 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
11076 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
11077 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
11078 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
11079 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
11080 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
11081
11082 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
11083 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
11084 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
11085 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
11086 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
11087 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
11088 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
11089 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
11090
11091 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
11092 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
11093 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
11094 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
11095 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
11096 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
11097 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
11098 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
11099
11100 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
11101 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
11102 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
11103 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
11104 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
11105 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
11106 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
11107 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
11108 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
11109 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
11110
11111 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
11112 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
11113 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
11114 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
11115
11116 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
11117 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
11118
11119       </div>
11120       <div class="tags">
11121
11122
11123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11124
11125
11126       </div>
11127     </div>
11128     <div class="padding"></div>
11129
11130     <div class="entry">
11131       <div class="title">
11132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
11133       </div>
11134       <div class="date">
11135          5th April 2012
11136       </div>
11137       <div class="body">
11138         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
11139 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
11140 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
11141 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
11142 for schools.  Check out his article
11143 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
11144 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
11145
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="tags">
11148
11149
11150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11151
11152
11153       </div>
11154     </div>
11155     <div class="padding"></div>
11156
11157     <div class="entry">
11158       <div class="title">
11159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="date">
11162          1st April 2012
11163       </div>
11164       <div class="body">
11165         <p>Germany is a core area for the
11166 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11167 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
11168 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
11169
11170 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11171
11172 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
11173 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
11174 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
11175 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
11176 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
11177 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
11178 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
11179 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
11180
11181 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
11182 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
11183 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
11184 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
11185 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
11186 the end of April this year.</p>
11187
11188 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11189 project?</strong></p>
11190
11191 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
11192 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
11193 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
11194 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
11195 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
11196 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
11197 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
11198 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
11199 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
11200 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
11201 Skolelinux.</p>
11202
11203 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
11204 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
11205 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
11206 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
11207 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
11208 the admin teachers.</p>
11209
11210 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11211 Edu?</strong></p>
11212
11213 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
11214 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
11215 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
11216
11217 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
11218 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
11219 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
11220 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
11221 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
11222
11223 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11224 Edu?</strong></p>
11225
11226 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
11227
11228 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11229
11230 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
11231 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
11232 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
11233 LibreOffice.</p>
11234
11235 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11236 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11237
11238 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
11239 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
11240 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
11241
11242       </div>
11243       <div class="tags">
11244
11245
11246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11247
11248
11249       </div>
11250     </div>
11251     <div class="padding"></div>
11252
11253     <div class="entry">
11254       <div class="title">
11255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
11256       </div>
11257       <div class="date">
11258         25th March 2012
11259       </div>
11260       <div class="body">
11261         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
11262
11263 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
11264 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
11265 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
11266 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
11267 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
11268 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
11269 and download as a
11270 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
11271 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
11272
11273 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
11274   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
11275     <p>Download video as
11276       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
11277 </video></p>
11278
11279       </div>
11280       <div class="tags">
11281
11282
11283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11284
11285
11286       </div>
11287     </div>
11288     <div class="padding"></div>
11289
11290     <div class="entry">
11291       <div class="title">
11292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
11293       </div>
11294       <div class="date">
11295         19th March 2012
11296       </div>
11297       <div class="body">
11298         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11299 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
11300 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
11301 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
11302 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
11303
11304 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11305
11306 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
11307 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
11308 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
11309 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
11310 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
11311 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
11312 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
11313 installations.</p>
11314
11315 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11316 project?</strong></p>
11317
11318 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
11319 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
11320 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
11321 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
11322 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
11323 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
11324 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
11325 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
11326 these things we decided to try it.</p>
11327
11328 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11329 Edu?</strong></p>
11330
11331 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
11332 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
11333 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
11334 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
11335 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
11336 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
11337 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
11338 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
11339
11340 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11341 Edu?</strong></p>
11342
11343 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
11344 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
11345 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
11346 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
11347 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
11348
11349 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11350
11351 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
11352 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
11353 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
11354 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
11355 that counts...)</p>
11356
11357 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11358 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11359
11360 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
11361 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
11362 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
11363 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
11364 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
11365 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
11366 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
11367 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
11368 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
11369 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
11370 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
11371
11372 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
11373 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
11374 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
11375
11376       </div>
11377       <div class="tags">
11378
11379
11380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11381
11382
11383       </div>
11384     </div>
11385     <div class="padding"></div>
11386
11387     <div class="entry">
11388       <div class="title">
11389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
11390       </div>
11391       <div class="date">
11392         16th March 2012
11393       </div>
11394       <div class="body">
11395         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
11396 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
11397 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
11398 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
11399
11400 <ol>
11401
11402 <li>The documentation is written in a
11403 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
11404 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
11405 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
11406 docbook XML.</li>
11407
11408 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
11409 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
11410 with the translated text.</li>
11411
11412 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
11413 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
11414 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
11415 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
11416 images.</li>
11417
11418 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
11419 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
11420
11421 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
11422 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
11423
11424 </ol>
11425
11426 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
11427 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
11428 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
11429 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
11430 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
11431
11432 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
11433 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
11434 package</a>.</p>
11435
11436       </div>
11437       <div class="tags">
11438
11439
11440         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11441
11442
11443       </div>
11444     </div>
11445     <div class="padding"></div>
11446
11447     <div class="entry">
11448       <div class="title">
11449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
11450       </div>
11451       <div class="date">
11452         11th March 2012
11453       </div>
11454       <div class="body">
11455         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
11456 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
11457 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11458 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
11459 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
11460 you have not done so already.</p>
11461
11462 <p>I plan to present the new version at
11463 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
11464 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
11465 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
11466
11467       </div>
11468       <div class="tags">
11469
11470
11471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11472
11473
11474       </div>
11475     </div>
11476     <div class="padding"></div>
11477
11478     <div class="entry">
11479       <div class="title">
11480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
11481       </div>
11482       <div class="date">
11483          9th March 2012
11484       </div>
11485       <div class="body">
11486         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
11487 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
11488 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11489 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
11490 more international audience.</p>
11491
11492 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11493 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
11494 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
11495 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
11496 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
11497 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
11498 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
11499
11500
11501 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11502
11503 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
11504 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
11505 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
11506 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
11507 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
11508 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
11509 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
11510 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
11511 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
11512 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
11513 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
11514
11515 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11516 project?</strong></p>
11517
11518 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
11519 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
11520 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
11521 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
11522 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
11523 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
11524 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
11525 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
11526 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
11527 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
11528 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
11529 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
11530 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
11531
11532 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11533 Edu?</strong></p>
11534
11535 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
11536 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
11537 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
11538 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
11539 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
11540 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
11541 Japan.</p>
11542
11543 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11544 Edu?</strong></p>
11545
11546 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
11547 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
11548 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
11549 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
11550 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
11551 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
11552 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
11553 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
11554 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
11555 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
11556 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
11557 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
11558 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
11559 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
11560 help.</p>
11561
11562 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11563
11564 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
11565 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
11566 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
11567 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
11568 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
11569 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
11570 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
11571 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
11572 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
11573 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
11574 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
11575
11576 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11577 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11578
11579 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
11580 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
11581 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
11582 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
11583 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
11584 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
11585 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
11586 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
11587 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
11588 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
11589 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
11590 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
11591
11592       </div>
11593       <div class="tags">
11594
11595
11596         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11597
11598
11599       </div>
11600     </div>
11601     <div class="padding"></div>
11602
11603     <div class="entry">
11604       <div class="title">
11605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
11606       </div>
11607       <div class="date">
11608          7th March 2012
11609       </div>
11610       <div class="body">
11611         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
11612
11613 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
11614 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
11615 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
11616 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
11617 download as a
11618 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
11619 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
11620
11621 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
11622   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
11623     <p>Download video as
11624       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
11625 </video></p>
11626
11627       </div>
11628       <div class="tags">
11629
11630
11631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11632
11633
11634       </div>
11635     </div>
11636     <div class="padding"></div>
11637
11638     <div class="entry">
11639       <div class="title">
11640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11641       </div>
11642       <div class="date">
11643          4th March 2012
11644       </div>
11645       <div class="body">
11646         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
11647 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11648 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11649 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
11650 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
11651 need a software solution for your school.</p>
11652
11653       </div>
11654       <div class="tags">
11655
11656
11657         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11658
11659
11660       </div>
11661     </div>
11662     <div class="padding"></div>
11663
11664     <div class="entry">
11665       <div class="title">
11666         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
11667       </div>
11668       <div class="date">
11669          3rd March 2012
11670       </div>
11671       <div class="body">
11672         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
11673 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
11674 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
11675 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
11676 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
11677 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
11678 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
11679 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
11680 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
11681 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
11682 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
11683 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
11684 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
11685 year...</p>
11686
11687 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
11688 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
11689 name,
11690 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
11691 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
11692 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
11693 mean). I've been following
11694 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
11695 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
11696 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
11697 Check it out. :)</p>
11698
11699       </div>
11700       <div class="tags">
11701
11702
11703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11704
11705
11706       </div>
11707     </div>
11708     <div class="padding"></div>
11709
11710     <div class="entry">
11711       <div class="title">
11712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11713       </div>
11714       <div class="date">
11715         27th February 2012
11716       </div>
11717       <div class="body">
11718         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
11719 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11720 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
11721 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
11722 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
11723 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
11724 need a software solution for your school.</p>
11725
11726       </div>
11727       <div class="tags">
11728
11729
11730         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11731
11732
11733       </div>
11734     </div>
11735     <div class="padding"></div>
11736
11737     <div class="entry">
11738       <div class="title">
11739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11740       </div>
11741       <div class="date">
11742         19th February 2012
11743       </div>
11744       <div class="body">
11745         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
11746 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
11747 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11748 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11749 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
11750 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
11751 solution for your school.</p>
11752
11753       </div>
11754       <div class="tags">
11755
11756
11757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11758
11759
11760       </div>
11761     </div>
11762     <div class="padding"></div>
11763
11764     <div class="entry">
11765       <div class="title">
11766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
11767       </div>
11768       <div class="date">
11769         14th February 2012
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="body">
11772         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
11773 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
11774 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
11775 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
11776 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
11777 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
11778 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
11779 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
11780 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
11781
11782 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
11783 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
11784 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
11785 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
11786 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
11787
11788 <blockquote><pre>
11789 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
11790 do
11791     printf "Failed disk $d: "
11792     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
11793 done
11794 </blockquote></pre>
11795
11796 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
11797 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
11798
11799 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
11800
11801 <blockquote><pre>
11802 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11803 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11804 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
11805 </blockquote></pre>
11806
11807 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
11808 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
11809 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
11810 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
11811 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
11812 mounted inside my box.</p>
11813
11814 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
11815 Software RAID in the
11816 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
11817 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
11818 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
11819 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
11820 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
11821 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
11822
11823       </div>
11824       <div class="tags">
11825
11826
11827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
11828
11829
11830       </div>
11831     </div>
11832     <div class="padding"></div>
11833
11834     <div class="entry">
11835       <div class="title">
11836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11837       </div>
11838       <div class="date">
11839         13th February 2012
11840       </div>
11841       <div class="body">
11842         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
11843 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
11844 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
11845 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
11846 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
11847 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
11848 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
11849 change the global proxy setting by editing
11850 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
11851 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
11852
11853 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
11854 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
11855 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
11856
11857 <blockquote><pre>
11858 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
11859 {
11860    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
11861        isPlainHostName(host) ||
11862        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
11863       return "DIRECT";
11864    else
11865       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
11866 }
11867 </pre></blockquote>
11868
11869 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
11870
11871 <blockquote><pre>
11872 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11873 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11874 </pre></blockquote>
11875
11876 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
11877 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
11878 would be used for
11879 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
11880 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
11881 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
11882 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
11883 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
11884 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
11885 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
11886 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
11887 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
11888 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
11889
11890 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
11891 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
11892 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
11893 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
11894 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
11895 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
11896
11897 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
11898 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
11899 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
11900 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
11901 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
11902 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
11903 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
11904 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
11905 the network setup changes.</p>
11906
11907 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
11908 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
11909 draft</a> and a
11910 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
11911 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
11912
11913       </div>
11914       <div class="tags">
11915
11916
11917         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11918
11919
11920       </div>
11921     </div>
11922     <div class="padding"></div>
11923
11924     <div class="entry">
11925       <div class="title">
11926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
11927       </div>
11928       <div class="date">
11929          5th February 2012
11930       </div>
11931       <div class="body">
11932         <p>Since the Lenny version of
11933 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
11934 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
11935 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
11936 in the morning.  This is done using the
11937 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
11938
11939 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
11940 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
11941 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
11942 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
11943 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
11944 the
11945 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
11946 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
11947 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
11948 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
11949 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
11950
11951 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
11952 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
11953 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
11954 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
11955 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
11956 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
11957 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
11958
11959 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
11960 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
11961 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
11962 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
11963 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
11964
11965       </div>
11966       <div class="tags">
11967
11968
11969         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11970
11971
11972       </div>
11973     </div>
11974     <div class="padding"></div>
11975
11976     <div class="entry">
11977       <div class="title">
11978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
11979       </div>
11980       <div class="date">
11981          4th February 2012
11982       </div>
11983       <div class="body">
11984         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
11985 publish the third beta version of
11986 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11987 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
11988 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
11989 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
11990 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11991 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
11992 on the project announcement list.</p>
11993
11994 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
11995 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
11996
11997 <ul>
11998
11999 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
12000   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
12001   the installation.</li>
12002
12003 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
12004   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
12005
12006 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
12007   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
12008   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
12009
12010 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
12011   for the local system administrator is created during installation
12012   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
12013   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
12014   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
12015   up to date on the system.</li>
12016
12017 </ul>
12018
12019 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
12020 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
12021 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
12022 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
12023
12024 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
12025 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
12026 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
12027 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
12028 will see you there?</p>
12029
12030       </div>
12031       <div class="tags">
12032
12033
12034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12035
12036
12037       </div>
12038     </div>
12039     <div class="padding"></div>
12040
12041     <div class="entry">
12042       <div class="title">
12043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12044       </div>
12045       <div class="date">
12046         27th January 2012
12047       </div>
12048       <div class="body">
12049         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
12050 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
12051 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12052 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
12053 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
12054 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
12055 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
12056
12057 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
12058 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
12059 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
12060 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
12061 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
12062 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
12063 not taken care of by this.</p>
12064
12065 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
12066 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
12067 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
12068 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
12069 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
12070 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
12071 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
12072 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
12073 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
12074 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
12075 firmware packages.</p>
12076
12077 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
12078 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
12079 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
12080 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
12081 initrd with extra firmware, the
12082 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
12083 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
12084 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
12085
12086 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
12087 network cards working.  For this,
12088 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
12089 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
12090 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
12091
12092 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
12093 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
12094 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
12095
12096 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
12097 try.</p>
12098
12099       </div>
12100       <div class="tags">
12101
12102
12103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12104
12105
12106       </div>
12107     </div>
12108     <div class="padding"></div>
12109
12110     <div class="entry">
12111       <div class="title">
12112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12113       </div>
12114       <div class="date">
12115         25th January 2012
12116       </div>
12117       <div class="body">
12118         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
12119 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
12120 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
12121 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
12122 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
12123
12124 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
12125 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
12126 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
12127 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
12128 this is done, log on to the central server and run
12129 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
12130 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
12131 will look similar to this:</p>
12132
12133 <p><blockquote><pre>
12134 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
12135 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
12136 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
12137
12138 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
12139
12140 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12141 enter password: *******
12142 %
12143 </pre></blockquote></p>
12144
12145 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
12146 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
12147 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
12148 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
12149 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
12150 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
12151 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
12152 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
12153 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
12154 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
12155 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
12156 automatically.</p>
12157
12158 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
12159 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
12160
12161 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
12162 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
12163 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
12164
12165       </div>
12166       <div class="tags">
12167
12168
12169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
12170
12171
12172       </div>
12173     </div>
12174     <div class="padding"></div>
12175
12176     <div class="entry">
12177       <div class="title">
12178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12179       </div>
12180       <div class="date">
12181         10th January 2012
12182       </div>
12183       <div class="body">
12184         <p>In the Squeeze version of
12185 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
12186 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
12187 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
12188 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
12189 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
12190 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
12191 first time.</p>
12192
12193 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
12194 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
12195 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
12196 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
12197
12198 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
12199 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
12200 new setting.</p>
12201
12202 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
12203 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
12204 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
12205
12206       </div>
12207       <div class="tags">
12208
12209
12210         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12211
12212
12213       </div>
12214     </div>
12215     <div class="padding"></div>
12216
12217     <div class="entry">
12218       <div class="title">
12219         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12220       </div>
12221       <div class="date">
12222          7th January 2012
12223       </div>
12224       <div class="body">
12225         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
12226 the second beta version of
12227 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
12228 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
12229 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
12230 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
12231 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
12232 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
12233 on the project announcement list.</p>
12234
12235       </div>
12236       <div class="tags">
12237
12238
12239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12240
12241
12242       </div>
12243     </div>
12244     <div class="padding"></div>
12245
12246     <div class="entry">
12247       <div class="title">
12248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
12249       </div>
12250       <div class="date">
12251          3rd January 2012
12252       </div>
12253       <div class="body">
12254         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
12255 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
12256 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
12257 interesting.</p>
12258
12259 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
12260 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
12261 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
12262 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
12263 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
12264 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
12265 wrap up its tasks.</p>
12266
12267 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
12268 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
12269 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
12270 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
12271 because I was typing.</P>
12272
12273 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
12274 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
12275 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
12276 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
12277 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
12278 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
12279 generate entropy.</p>
12280
12281 <p>The fix is in
12282 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
12283 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
12284 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
12285 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
12286
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="tags">
12289
12290
12291         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12292
12293
12294       </div>
12295     </div>
12296     <div class="padding"></div>
12297
12298     <div class="entry">
12299       <div class="title">
12300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
12301       </div>
12302       <div class="date">
12303         21st November 2011
12304       </div>
12305       <div class="body">
12306         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
12307 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
12308 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
12309 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
12310 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
12311 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
12312 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
12313 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
12314 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
12315 the tools to do so.</p>
12316
12317 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
12318 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
12319 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
12320 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
12321
12322 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
12323 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
12324 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
12325 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
12326 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
12327 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
12328 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
12329 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
12330
12331 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
12332 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
12333 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
12334
12335 <p><pre>
12336 #!/usr/bin/perl
12337 use strict;
12338 use warnings;
12339 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
12340 BEGIN {
12341     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
12342     my %rhelmodules = (
12343         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
12344         );
12345     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
12346         eval "use $module;";
12347         if ($@) {
12348             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
12349             system("yum install -y $pkg");
12350             eval "use $module;";
12351         }
12352     }
12353 }
12354 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
12355
12356 upgrade_dell();
12357
12358 exit 0;
12359
12360 sub run_firmware_script {
12361     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
12362     unless ($script) {
12363         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
12364         exit 1
12365     }
12366     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
12367
12368     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
12369         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
12370     } else {
12371         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
12372     }
12373 }
12374
12375 sub run_firmware_scripts {
12376     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
12377     # Run firmware packages
12378     for my $dir (@dirs) {
12379         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
12380         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
12381         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
12382             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
12383             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
12384         }
12385         closedir $dh;
12386     }
12387 }
12388
12389 sub download {
12390     my $url = shift;
12391     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
12392     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
12393 }
12394
12395 sub upgrade_dell {
12396     my @dirs;
12397     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12398     chomp $product;
12399
12400     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
12401
12402         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
12403         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
12404
12405         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
12406             CLEANUP => 1
12407             );
12408         chdir($tmpdir);
12409         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
12410         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
12411         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
12412         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
12413         my $fwopts = "-q";
12414         if (@paths) {
12415             for my $url (@paths) {
12416                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
12417             }
12418             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
12419         } else {
12420             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12421             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12422         }
12423         chdir('/');
12424     } else {
12425         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12426         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12427     }
12428 }
12429
12430 sub fetch_dell_fw {
12431     my $path = shift;
12432     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
12433     download($url);
12434 }
12435
12436 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
12437 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
12438 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
12439 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
12440     my $filename = shift;
12441
12442     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12443     chomp $product;
12444     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
12445
12446     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
12447
12448     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
12449     my @paths;
12450     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
12451         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
12452         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
12453         my $oscode;
12454         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
12455             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
12456         } else {
12457             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
12458         }
12459         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
12460         {
12461             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
12462         }
12463     }
12464     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
12465         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
12466
12467         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
12468         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
12469
12470         my $cpath = $component->{path};
12471         for my $path (@paths) {
12472             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
12473                 push(@paths, $cpath);
12474             }
12475         }
12476     }
12477     return @paths;
12478 }
12479 </pre>
12480
12481 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
12482 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
12483 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
12484 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
12485 outdated.</p>
12486
12487       </div>
12488       <div class="tags">
12489
12490
12491         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>.
12492
12493
12494       </div>
12495     </div>
12496     <div class="padding"></div>
12497
12498     <div class="entry">
12499       <div class="title">
12500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
12501       </div>
12502       <div class="date">
12503          7th October 2011
12504       </div>
12505       <div class="body">
12506         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
12507 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
12508 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
12509 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
12510 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
12511 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
12512 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
12513 models.</p>
12514
12515 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
12516 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
12517 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
12518 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
12519
12520 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
12521 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
12522 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
12523 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
12524 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
12525 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
12526 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
12527 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
12528 distributed.</p>
12529
12530 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
12531
12532 <ul>
12533
12534 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
12535   other relevant equipment.</li>
12536
12537 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
12538
12539 </ul>
12540
12541 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
12542 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
12543 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
12544 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
12545 books available.</p>
12546
12547 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
12548 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
12549 libraries. :)</p>
12550
12551       </div>
12552       <div class="tags">
12553
12554
12555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12556
12557
12558       </div>
12559     </div>
12560     <div class="padding"></div>
12561
12562     <div class="entry">
12563       <div class="title">
12564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
12565       </div>
12566       <div class="date">
12567         17th September 2011
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="body">
12570         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
12571 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
12572 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
12573 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
12574 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
12575 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
12576 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
12577 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
12578
12579 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
12580
12581 <blockquote><pre>
12582 #!/bin/sh
12583 # apt-get install lsdvd
12584 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
12585 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
12586 </pre></blockquote>
12587
12588 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
12589 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
12590 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
12591 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
12592
12593 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
12594 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
12595 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
12596 back as an ISO.
12597
12598 <blockquote><pre>
12599 #!/bin/sh
12600 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
12601 set -e
12602 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
12603 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
12604 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
12605 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
12606 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
12607 </pre></blockquote>
12608
12609 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
12610
12611 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
12612 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
12613 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
12614 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
12615 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
12616
12617 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
12618 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
12619 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
12620 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
12621 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
12622 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
12623
12624       </div>
12625       <div class="tags">
12626
12627
12628         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12629
12630
12631       </div>
12632     </div>
12633     <div class="padding"></div>
12634
12635     <div class="entry">
12636       <div class="title">
12637         <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>
12638       </div>
12639       <div class="date">
12640          4th August 2011
12641       </div>
12642       <div class="body">
12643         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
12644 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
12645 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
12646 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
12647 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
12648 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
12649 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
12650 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
12651 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
12652
12653 <p><blockquote>
12654 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
12655 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
12656 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
12657 </blockquote></p>
12658
12659 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
12660 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
12661 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
12662 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
12663 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
12664 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
12665 hard to explain.</p>
12666
12667 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
12668 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
12669 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
12670 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
12671 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
12672 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
12673 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
12674 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
12675 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
12676 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
12677 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
12678 mode).</p>
12679
12680 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
12681 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
12682 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
12683 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
12684 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
12685 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
12686 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
12687 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
12688 after visiting single user mode.</p>
12689
12690 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
12691 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
12692 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
12693 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
12694 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
12695 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
12696 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
12697 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
12698
12699 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
12700 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
12701 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
12702
12703       </div>
12704       <div class="tags">
12705
12706
12707         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>.
12708
12709
12710       </div>
12711     </div>
12712     <div class="padding"></div>
12713
12714     <div class="entry">
12715       <div class="title">
12716         <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>
12717       </div>
12718       <div class="date">
12719         30th July 2011
12720       </div>
12721       <div class="body">
12722         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
12723 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
12724 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
12725 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
12726 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
12727 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
12728 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
12729 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
12730 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
12731 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
12732 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
12733 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
12734 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
12735
12736 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
12737 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
12738 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
12739 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
12740 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
12741 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
12742 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
12743 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
12744 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
12745
12746 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
12747 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
12748 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
12749 is presented.</p>
12750
12751 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
12752 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
12753 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
12754 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
12755 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
12756 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
12757 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
12758 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
12759 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
12760 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
12761 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
12762 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
12763 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
12764 find time to push this forward.</p>
12765
12766       </div>
12767       <div class="tags">
12768
12769
12770         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>.
12771
12772
12773       </div>
12774     </div>
12775     <div class="padding"></div>
12776
12777     <div class="entry">
12778       <div class="title">
12779         <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>
12780       </div>
12781       <div class="date">
12782         29th July 2011
12783       </div>
12784       <div class="body">
12785         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12786 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12787 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12788 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12789 issues.</p>
12790
12791 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12792 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12793 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
12794
12795 <ol>
12796
12797 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
12798 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12799 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12800 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12801 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12802 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12803 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12804 Debian.</li>
12805
12806 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12807 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12808 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12809 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12810 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12811 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12812 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12813 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12814 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12815 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12816 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12817 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12818 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
12819
12820 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12821 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
12822 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12823 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12824 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12825 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12826 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12827 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12828 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12829 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
12830
12831 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
12832 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12833 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12834 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12835 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12836 latter behaviour.</li>
12837
12838 </ol>
12839
12840 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12841 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12842 it do not matter much.</p>
12843
12844 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12845 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12846 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
12847
12848       </div>
12849       <div class="tags">
12850
12851
12852         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>.
12853
12854
12855       </div>
12856     </div>
12857     <div class="padding"></div>
12858
12859     <div class="entry">
12860       <div class="title">
12861         <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>
12862       </div>
12863       <div class="date">
12864         26th July 2011
12865       </div>
12866       <div class="body">
12867         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
12868 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12869 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12870 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12871 security support for a few years.</p>
12872
12873 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12874 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12875 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12876 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
12877 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12878 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
12879 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12880 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12881 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12882 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12883 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12884 easier in the future.</p>
12885
12886 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12887 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
12888 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12889 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12890 do not have time for.</p>
12891
12892       </div>
12893       <div class="tags">
12894
12895
12896         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>.
12897
12898
12899       </div>
12900     </div>
12901     <div class="padding"></div>
12902
12903     <div class="entry">
12904       <div class="title">
12905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
12906       </div>
12907       <div class="date">
12908         20th June 2011
12909       </div>
12910       <div class="body">
12911         <p>Reading
12912 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
12913 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
12914 parts of the
12915 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
12916 and
12917 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
12918 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
12919 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
12920 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
12921
12922       </div>
12923       <div class="tags">
12924
12925
12926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12927
12928
12929       </div>
12930     </div>
12931     <div class="padding"></div>
12932
12933     <div class="entry">
12934       <div class="title">
12935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
12936       </div>
12937       <div class="date">
12938         30th April 2011
12939       </div>
12940       <div class="body">
12941         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
12942 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
12943 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
12944 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
12945 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
12946 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
12947 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
12948 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
12949 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
12950 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
12951
12952 <p>Where is it?  Visit
12953 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
12954 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
12955 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12956 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
12957
12958       </div>
12959       <div class="tags">
12960
12961
12962         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
12963
12964
12965       </div>
12966     </div>
12967     <div class="padding"></div>
12968
12969     <div class="entry">
12970       <div class="title">
12971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
12972       </div>
12973       <div class="date">
12974         29th April 2011
12975       </div>
12976       <div class="body">
12977         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
12978 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
12979 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
12980 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
12981 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
12982 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
12983 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
12984 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
12985 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
12986 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
12987 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
12988 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
12989 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
12990
12991 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
12992 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
12993 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
12994 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
12995 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
12996 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
12997 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
12998 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
12999 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
13000 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
13001 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
13002 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
13003 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
13004
13005 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
13006 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
13007 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
13008 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
13009 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
13010 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
13011 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
13012 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
13013 it.</p>
13014
13015 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
13016 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
13017 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
13018 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
13019 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
13020 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
13021 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
13022
13023 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
13024 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
13025 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
13026 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
13027 and range= options.</p>
13028
13029 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
13030 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
13031 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
13032 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
13033 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
13034 to best handle this.  I've noticed
13035 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
13036 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
13037 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
13038 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
13039
13040 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
13041 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
13042 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
13043 discussions instead of only
13044 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
13045 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
13046 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
13047 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
13048 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
13049 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
13050
13051       </div>
13052       <div class="tags">
13053
13054
13055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
13056
13057
13058       </div>
13059     </div>
13060     <div class="padding"></div>
13061
13062     <div class="entry">
13063       <div class="title">
13064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
13065       </div>
13066       <div class="date">
13067          6th April 2011
13068       </div>
13069       <div class="body">
13070         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
13071 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
13072 A few days ago the project
13073 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
13074 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
13075 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
13076 into Gnash.</p>
13077
13078       </div>
13079       <div class="tags">
13080
13081
13082         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13083
13084
13085       </div>
13086     </div>
13087     <div class="padding"></div>
13088
13089     <div class="entry">
13090       <div class="title">
13091         <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>
13092       </div>
13093       <div class="date">
13094          3rd April 2011
13095       </div>
13096       <div class="body">
13097         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
13098 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
13099 update in English.</p>
13100
13101 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
13102 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
13103 of the British service
13104 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
13105 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
13106 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
13107 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
13108 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
13109 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
13110 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
13111 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
13112 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
13113 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
13114 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
13115 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
13116 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
13117
13118 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
13119 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
13120 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
13121 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
13122 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
13123 public infrastructure.</p>
13124
13125 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
13126 such service?</p>
13127
13128       </div>
13129       <div class="tags">
13130
13131
13132         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>.
13133
13134
13135       </div>
13136     </div>
13137     <div class="padding"></div>
13138
13139     <div class="entry">
13140       <div class="title">
13141         <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>
13142       </div>
13143       <div class="date">
13144         28th January 2011
13145       </div>
13146       <div class="body">
13147         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
13148 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
13149 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
13150 available on the Internet, and check our locally
13151 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
13152 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
13153 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
13154 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
13155 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
13156 out which security holes were present in our free software
13157 collection.</p>
13158
13159 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
13160 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
13161 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
13162 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
13163 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
13164 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
13165 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
13166 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
13167 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
13168 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
13169 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
13170 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
13171 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
13172 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
13173 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
13174 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
13175
13176 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
13177 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
13178 check out, one could look up
13179 <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
13180 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
13181 The most recent one is
13182 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
13183 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
13184 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
13185
13186 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
13187 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
13188 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
13189 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
13190 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
13191 security issues out.</p>
13192
13193 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
13194 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
13195 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
13196 RHEL is providing
13197 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
13198 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
13199 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
13200
13201 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
13202 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
13203 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
13204 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
13205 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
13206 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
13207 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
13208 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
13209 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
13210 established soon.</p>
13211
13212 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
13213 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
13214 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
13215 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
13216 for their packages.</p>
13217
13218       </div>
13219       <div class="tags">
13220
13221
13222         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>.
13223
13224
13225       </div>
13226     </div>
13227     <div class="padding"></div>
13228
13229     <div class="entry">
13230       <div class="title">
13231         <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>
13232       </div>
13233       <div class="date">
13234         23rd January 2011
13235       </div>
13236       <div class="body">
13237         <p>In the
13238 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
13239 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
13240 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
13241 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
13242 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
13243 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
13244 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
13245 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
13246 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
13247 one of my machines like this:</p>
13248
13249 <pre>
13250 loaded modules:
13251 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
13252 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
13253 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
13254 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
13255 10de:03ec pata_amd
13256 10de:03f6 sata_nv
13257 1022:1103 k8temp
13258 109e:036e bttv
13259 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
13260 11ab:4364 sky2
13261 </pre>
13262
13263 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
13264 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
13265
13266 <pre>
13267 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
13268     echo loaded pci modules:
13269     (
13270         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
13271         for address in * ; do
13272             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13273                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13274                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13275                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13276                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
13277                     echo "$id $module"
13278                 fi
13279             fi
13280         done
13281     )
13282     echo
13283 fi
13284 </pre>
13285
13286 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
13287 mappings:</p>
13288
13289 <pre>
13290 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
13291     echo loaded usb modules:
13292     (
13293         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
13294         for address in * ; do
13295             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13296                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13297                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13298                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13299                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
13300                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
13301                         echo "$id $module"
13302                     fi
13303                 fi
13304             fi
13305         done
13306     )
13307     echo
13308 fi
13309 </pre>
13310
13311 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
13312 well.</p>
13313
13314       </div>
13315       <div class="tags">
13316
13317
13318         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>.
13319
13320
13321       </div>
13322     </div>
13323     <div class="padding"></div>
13324
13325     <div class="entry">
13326       <div class="title">
13327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
13328       </div>
13329       <div class="date">
13330         16th January 2011
13331       </div>
13332       <div class="body">
13333         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
13334 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
13335 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
13336 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
13337 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
13338 the Wikipedia article on
13339 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
13340 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
13341 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
13342 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
13343 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
13344 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
13345 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
13346 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
13347 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
13348 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
13349 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
13350 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
13351
13352 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
13353 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
13354 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
13355 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
13356 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
13357 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
13358 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
13359 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
13360 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
13361 from last week</a>.</p>
13362
13363 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
13364 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
13365 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
13366 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
13367 was without royalties and license terms, check out
13368 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
13369 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
13370
13371 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
13372 available from
13373 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
13374 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
13375 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
13376
13377 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
13378 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
13379 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
13380 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
13381
13382       </div>
13383       <div class="tags">
13384
13385
13386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13387
13388
13389       </div>
13390     </div>
13391     <div class="padding"></div>
13392
13393     <div class="entry">
13394       <div class="title">
13395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
13396       </div>
13397       <div class="date">
13398         12th January 2011
13399       </div>
13400       <div class="body">
13401         <p>Today I discovered
13402 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
13403 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
13404 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
13405 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
13406 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
13407 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
13408 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
13409 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
13410 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
13411 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
13412 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
13413 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
13414 on the Google announcement is available from
13415 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
13416 A good read. :)</p>
13417
13418 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
13419 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
13420 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
13421 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
13422 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
13423 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
13424 browsers support H.264, and others support
13425 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
13426 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
13427 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
13428 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
13429 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
13430 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
13431 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
13432 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
13433
13434 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
13435 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
13436 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
13437 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
13438 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
13439 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
13440 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
13441
13442 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
13443 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
13444 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
13445 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
13446 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
13447 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
13448 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
13449
13450 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
13451 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
13452 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
13453 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
13454 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
13455 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
13456 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
13457
13458 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
13459 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
13460 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
13461 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
13462 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
13463 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
13464 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
13465 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
13466 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
13467 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
13468 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
13469 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
13470 I guess time will tell.</p>
13471
13472 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
13473 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
13474 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
13475
13476       </div>
13477       <div class="tags">
13478
13479
13480         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13481
13482
13483       </div>
13484     </div>
13485     <div class="padding"></div>
13486
13487     <div class="entry">
13488       <div class="title">
13489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
13490       </div>
13491       <div class="date">
13492         30th December 2010
13493       </div>
13494       <div class="body">
13495         <p>After trying to
13496 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
13497 Ogg Theora</a> to
13498 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
13499 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
13500 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
13501 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
13502 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
13503 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
13504 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
13505
13506 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
13507 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
13508 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
13509 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
13510 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
13511 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
13512 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
13513
13514 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
13515 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
13516
13517       </div>
13518       <div class="tags">
13519
13520
13521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13522
13523
13524       </div>
13525     </div>
13526     <div class="padding"></div>
13527
13528     <div class="entry">
13529       <div class="title">
13530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
13531       </div>
13532       <div class="date">
13533         27th December 2010
13534       </div>
13535       <div class="body">
13536         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
13537 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
13538 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
13539 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
13540 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
13541 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
13542 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
13543 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
13544
13545 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
13546 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
13547 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
13548 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
13549 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
13550 page</a>.</p>
13551
13552 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
13553 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
13554 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
13555 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
13556 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
13557 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
13558 specification on equal terms.</p>
13559
13560 <blockquote>
13561
13562 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
13563 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
13564 open standard:</p>
13565
13566 <ul>
13567
13568 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13569 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13570 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
13571 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
13572
13573 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
13574 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
13575 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
13576 nominal fee.</li>
13577
13578 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
13579 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
13580 free basis.</li>
13581
13582 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
13583
13584 </ul>
13585 </blockquote>
13586
13587 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
13588 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
13589 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
13590 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
13591 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
13592 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
13593 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
13594
13595 <blockquote>
13596
13597 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
13598
13599 <ol>
13600
13601 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
13602 tilgængelig.</li>
13603
13604 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
13605 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
13606
13607 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
13608 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
13609
13610 </ol>
13611
13612 </blockquote>
13613
13614 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
13615 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
13616
13617 <blockquote>
13618
13619 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
13620
13621 <ol>
13622
13623 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
13624 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
13625
13626 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
13627 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
13628 Standard themselves;</li>
13629
13630 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
13631 any party or in any business model;</li>
13632
13633 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
13634 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
13635 parties;</li>
13636
13637 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
13638 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
13639 parties.</li>
13640
13641 </ol>
13642
13643 </blockquote>
13644
13645 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
13646 its
13647 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
13648 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
13649
13650 <blockquote>
13651 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
13652
13653 <ul>
13654
13655 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
13656   democratic:
13657
13658          <ul>
13659
13660          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
13661             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
13662             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
13663             and managed.</li>
13664
13665          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
13666             method, can be changed through input from all
13667             participants.</li>
13668
13669          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
13670             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
13671
13672          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
13673             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
13674
13675          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
13676             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
13677             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
13678
13679          </ul>
13680
13681 </li>
13682
13683 </ul>
13684
13685 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
13686 <ul>
13687
13688 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
13689   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
13690   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
13691   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
13692   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
13693
13694 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
13695   a technical or economic barriers</li>
13696
13697 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
13698   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
13699   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
13700   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
13701   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
13702   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
13703   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
13704   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
13705   intended to function.</li>
13706
13707 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
13708   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
13709   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
13710
13711 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
13712   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
13713   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
13714   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
13715   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
13716   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
13717   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
13718   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
13719
13720       <ul>
13721
13722       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
13723         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
13724         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
13725
13726       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
13727         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
13728         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
13729         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
13730
13731       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
13732         licensor</li>
13733
13734       </ul>
13735 </li>
13736
13737 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
13738   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
13739   or restricted licensing terms</li>
13740
13741 </ul>
13742
13743 </blockquote>
13744
13745 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
13746 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
13747 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
13748 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
13749 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
13750 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
13751 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
13752 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
13753 Standards.</p>
13754
13755       </div>
13756       <div class="tags">
13757
13758
13759         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13760
13761
13762       </div>
13763     </div>
13764     <div class="padding"></div>
13765
13766     <div class="entry">
13767       <div class="title">
13768         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
13769       </div>
13770       <div class="date">
13771         25th December 2010
13772       </div>
13773       <div class="body">
13774         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
13775 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
13776
13777 <blockquote>
13778
13779 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
13780 as follows:</p>
13781
13782 <ol>
13783
13784 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
13785 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
13786 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
13787
13788 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13789 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13790 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
13791 parties.</li>
13792
13793 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
13794 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
13795 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
13796
13797 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
13798 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
13799
13800 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
13801
13802 </ol>
13803
13804 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
13805 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
13806 products based on the standard.</p>
13807 </blockquote>
13808
13809 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
13810 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
13811 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
13812 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
13813 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
13814 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
13815 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
13816 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
13817
13818 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
13819
13820 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
13821 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
13822 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
13823 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
13824 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
13825 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
13826 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
13827 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
13828 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
13829 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
13830 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
13831 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
13832 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
13833 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
13834
13835 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
13836
13837 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
13838 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
13839 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
13840 documentation indicating this.</p>
13841
13842 <p>According to
13843 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
13844 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
13845 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
13846 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
13847 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
13848 report is correct.</p>
13849
13850 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
13851
13852 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
13853 container format</a> and both the
13854 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
13855 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
13856 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
13857
13858 <blockquote>
13859
13860 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
13861 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
13862 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
13863 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
13864 specification compliance.
13865
13866 </blockquote>
13867
13868 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
13869 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
13870 this is the term:<p>
13871
13872 <blockquote>
13873
13874 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
13875 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
13876 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
13877 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
13878 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
13879 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
13880 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
13881 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
13882 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
13883 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
13884 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
13885 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
13886
13887 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
13888 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
13889 </blockquote>
13890
13891 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
13892 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
13893 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
13894 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
13895 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
13896
13897 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
13898
13899 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
13900 Theora format.
13901 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
13902 and
13903 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
13904 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
13905 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
13906 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
13907 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
13908 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
13909 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
13910 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
13911
13912 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
13913
13914 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
13915
13916 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
13917
13918 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
13919 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
13920 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
13921 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
13922 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
13923 this.</p>
13924
13925 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
13926 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
13927
13928       </div>
13929       <div class="tags">
13930
13931
13932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13933
13934
13935       </div>
13936     </div>
13937     <div class="padding"></div>
13938
13939     <div class="entry">
13940       <div class="title">
13941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
13942       </div>
13943       <div class="date">
13944         25th December 2010
13945       </div>
13946       <div class="body">
13947         <p>A few days ago
13948 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
13949 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
13950 2.0 of
13951 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
13952 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
13953 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
13954 Nothing very surprising there, given
13955 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
13956 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
13957 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
13958 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
13959 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
13960 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
13961 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
13962 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
13963 standard definition from its content.</p>
13964
13965 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
13966 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
13967 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
13968 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
13969 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
13970 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
13971 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
13972 background information about that story is available in
13973 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
13974 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
13975
13976 <blockquote>
13977 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
13978 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
13979 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
13980
13981 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
13982
13983 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
13984
13985 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
13986
13987 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
13988
13989 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
13990
13991 <p>
13992 <ul>
13993 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
13994 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
13995 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
13996 </ul>
13997 </p>
13998
13999 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
14000
14001 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
14002
14003 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
14004
14005 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
14006
14007 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
14008
14009
14010 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
14011 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
14012 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
14013 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
14014 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
14015 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
14016
14017 </p>
14018
14019 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
14020
14021 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
14022
14023 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
14024
14025 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
14026
14027 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
14028
14029 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
14030
14031 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
14032
14033 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
14034
14035 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
14036
14037 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
14038
14039 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
14040
14041 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
14042
14043 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
14044
14045 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
14046
14047 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
14048
14049 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
14050
14051 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
14052
14053 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
14054
14055 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
14056
14057 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
14058
14059 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
14060
14061 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
14062
14063 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
14064
14065 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
14066
14067 <p>On security:</p>
14068
14069 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
14070
14071 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
14072
14073 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
14074
14075 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
14076
14077 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
14078
14079 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
14080
14081 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
14082
14083 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
14084
14085 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
14086
14087 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
14088
14089 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
14090
14091 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
14092
14093 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
14094
14095 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
14096
14097 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
14098
14099 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
14100
14101 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
14102
14103 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
14104
14105 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
14106
14107 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
14108
14109 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
14110
14111 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
14112
14113 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
14114
14115 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
14116
14117 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
14118
14119 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
14120
14121 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
14122
14123 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
14124
14125 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
14126
14127 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
14128
14129 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
14130
14131 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
14132
14133 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
14134
14135 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
14136
14137 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
14138
14139 <p>Cordially,<br>
14140 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
14141 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
14142 </blockquote>
14143
14144       </div>
14145       <div class="tags">
14146
14147
14148         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14149
14150
14151       </div>
14152     </div>
14153     <div class="padding"></div>
14154
14155     <div class="entry">
14156       <div class="title">
14157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
14158       </div>
14159       <div class="date">
14160         25th December 2010
14161       </div>
14162       <div class="body">
14163         <p>Half a year ago I
14164 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
14165 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
14166 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
14167 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
14168
14169 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
14170 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
14171 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
14172 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
14173 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
14174 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
14175 got such a great test tool available.</p>
14176
14177       </div>
14178       <div class="tags">
14179
14180
14181         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14182
14183
14184       </div>
14185     </div>
14186     <div class="padding"></div>
14187
14188     <div class="entry">
14189       <div class="title">
14190         <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>
14191       </div>
14192       <div class="date">
14193         22nd December 2010
14194       </div>
14195       <div class="body">
14196         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
14197 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
14198 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
14199 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
14200 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
14201 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
14202 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
14203 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
14204 university.</p>
14205
14206 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
14207 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
14208 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
14209 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
14210 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
14211 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
14212 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
14213 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
14214
14215 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
14216 I perform on a new model.</p>
14217
14218 <ul>
14219
14220 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
14221 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
14222 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
14223
14224 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
14225 installation, X.org is working.</li>
14226
14227 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
14228 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
14229 reported by the program.</li>
14230
14231 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
14232 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
14233 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
14234 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
14235 normally test this by playing
14236 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
14237 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
14238
14239 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
14240 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
14241
14242 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
14243 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
14244
14245 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
14246 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
14247
14248 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
14249 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
14250 few.</li>
14251
14252 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
14253 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
14254 notice this.</li>
14255
14256 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
14257 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
14258 resume.</li>
14259
14260 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
14261 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
14262 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
14263 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
14264 not.</li>
14265
14266 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
14267 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
14268 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
14269 existence.</li>
14270
14271 </ul>
14272
14273 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
14274 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
14275 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
14276 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
14277 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
14278 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
14279 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
14280 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
14281
14282       </div>
14283       <div class="tags">
14284
14285
14286         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>.
14287
14288
14289       </div>
14290     </div>
14291     <div class="padding"></div>
14292
14293     <div class="entry">
14294       <div class="title">
14295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
14296       </div>
14297       <div class="date">
14298         11th December 2010
14299       </div>
14300       <div class="body">
14301         <p>As I continue to explore
14302 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
14303 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
14304 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
14305
14306 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
14307 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
14308 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
14309 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
14310 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
14311 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
14312 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
14313 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
14314 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
14315 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
14316 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
14317 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
14318 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
14319 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
14320 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
14321 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
14322 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
14323 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
14324 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
14325 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
14326
14327 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
14328 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
14329 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
14330 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
14331 If the Skolelinux foundation
14332 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
14333 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
14334 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
14335 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
14336 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
14337 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
14338 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
14339 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
14340
14341 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
14342 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
14343 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
14344 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
14345 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
14346 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
14347 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
14348 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
14349 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
14350 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
14351 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
14352 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
14353 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
14354 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
14355 currencies.</p>
14356
14357 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
14358 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
14359 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
14360 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
14361 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
14362 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
14363 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
14364 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
14365 BitCoins.  Check out
14366 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
14367 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
14368 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
14369 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
14370 yet.</p>
14371
14372 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
14373 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
14374 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
14375 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
14376 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
14377
14378       </div>
14379       <div class="tags">
14380
14381
14382         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>.
14383
14384
14385       </div>
14386     </div>
14387     <div class="padding"></div>
14388
14389     <div class="entry">
14390       <div class="title">
14391         <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>
14392       </div>
14393       <div class="date">
14394         10th December 2010
14395       </div>
14396       <div class="body">
14397         <p>With this weeks lawless
14398 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
14399 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
14400 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
14401 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
14402 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
14403 A blog post from
14404 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
14405 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
14406 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
14407 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
14408 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
14409 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
14410 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
14411
14412 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
14413 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
14414 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
14415 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
14416 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
14417 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
14418 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
14419 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
14420 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
14421 Debian</a> soon.</p>
14422
14423 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
14424 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
14425 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
14426 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
14427 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
14428 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
14429 you can even get
14430 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
14431 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
14432 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
14433 on the current exchange rates.</p>
14434
14435 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
14436 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
14437 donations to the address
14438 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
14439
14440       </div>
14441       <div class="tags">
14442
14443
14444         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>.
14445
14446
14447       </div>
14448     </div>
14449     <div class="padding"></div>
14450
14451     <div class="entry">
14452       <div class="title">
14453         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
14454       </div>
14455       <div class="date">
14456          9th December 2010
14457       </div>
14458       <div class="body">
14459         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
14460 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
14461 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
14462 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
14463 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
14464 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
14465 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
14466 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
14467 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
14468 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
14469 operational.</p>
14470
14471 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
14472 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
14473 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
14474 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
14475 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
14476 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
14477 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
14478
14479       </div>
14480       <div class="tags">
14481
14482
14483         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
14484
14485
14486       </div>
14487     </div>
14488     <div class="padding"></div>
14489
14490     <div class="entry">
14491       <div class="title">
14492         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
14493       </div>
14494       <div class="date">
14495         29th November 2010
14496       </div>
14497       <div class="body">
14498         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14499 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
14500 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
14501 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
14502 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
14503 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
14504
14505 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
14506 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
14507 will hold its
14508 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
14509 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
14510 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
14511 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
14512 vote this year.</p>
14513
14514       </div>
14515       <div class="tags">
14516
14517
14518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14519
14520
14521       </div>
14522     </div>
14523     <div class="padding"></div>
14524
14525     <div class="entry">
14526       <div class="title">
14527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
14528       </div>
14529       <div class="date">
14530         27th November 2010
14531       </div>
14532       <div class="body">
14533         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
14534 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
14535 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
14536 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
14537 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
14538 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
14539 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
14540 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
14541
14542 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
14543 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14544 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
14545 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
14546 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
14547 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
14548 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
14549 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
14550 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
14551 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
14552 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
14553
14554 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
14555 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
14556 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
14557 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
14558 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
14559 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
14560 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
14561 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
14562 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
14563 what is going on.</p>
14564
14565       </div>
14566       <div class="tags">
14567
14568
14569         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>.
14570
14571
14572       </div>
14573     </div>
14574     <div class="padding"></div>
14575
14576     <div class="entry">
14577       <div class="title">
14578         <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>
14579       </div>
14580       <div class="date">
14581         22nd November 2010
14582       </div>
14583       <div class="body">
14584         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
14585 upgrade testing of the
14586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14587 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
14588 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
14589 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
14590
14591 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14592
14593 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14594
14595 <blockquote><p>
14596   apache2.2-bin
14597   aptdaemon
14598   baobab
14599   binfmt-support
14600   browser-plugin-gnash
14601   cheese-common
14602   cli-common
14603   cups-pk-helper
14604   dmz-cursor-theme
14605   empathy
14606   empathy-common
14607   freedesktop-sound-theme
14608   freeglut3
14609   gconf-defaults-service
14610   gdm-themes
14611   gedit-plugins
14612   geoclue
14613   geoclue-hostip
14614   geoclue-localnet
14615   geoclue-manual
14616   geoclue-yahoo
14617   gnash
14618   gnash-common
14619   gnome
14620   gnome-backgrounds
14621   gnome-cards-data
14622   gnome-codec-install
14623   gnome-core
14624   gnome-desktop-environment
14625   gnome-disk-utility
14626   gnome-screenshot
14627   gnome-search-tool
14628   gnome-session-canberra
14629   gnome-system-log
14630   gnome-themes-extras
14631   gnome-themes-more
14632   gnome-user-share
14633   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14634   gstreamer0.10-tools
14635   gtk2-engines
14636   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14637   gtk2-engines-smooth
14638   hamster-applet
14639   libapache2-mod-dnssd
14640   libapr1
14641   libaprutil1
14642   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
14643   libaprutil1-ldap
14644   libart2.0-cil
14645   libboost-date-time1.42.0
14646   libboost-python1.42.0
14647   libboost-thread1.42.0
14648   libchamplain-0.4-0
14649   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
14650   libcheese-gtk18
14651   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14652   libcryptui0
14653   libdiscid0
14654   libelf1
14655   libepc-1.0-2
14656   libepc-common
14657   libepc-ui-1.0-2
14658   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14659   libfreerdp0
14660   libgconf2.0-cil
14661   libgdata-common
14662   libgdata7
14663   libgdu-gtk0
14664   libgee2
14665   libgeoclue0
14666   libgexiv2-0
14667   libgif4
14668   libglade2.0-cil
14669   libglib2.0-cil
14670   libgmime2.4-cil
14671   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14672   libgnome2.24-cil
14673   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
14674   libgpod-common
14675   libgpod4
14676   libgtk2.0-cil
14677   libgtkglext1
14678   libgtksourceview2.0-common
14679   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14680   libmono-addins0.2-cil
14681   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
14682   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14683   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
14684   libmono-posix2.0-cil
14685   libmono-security2.0-cil
14686   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14687   libmono-system2.0-cil
14688   libmtp8
14689   libmusicbrainz3-6
14690   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
14691   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
14692   libopal3.6.8
14693   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
14694   libpt2.6.7
14695   libpython2.6
14696   librpm1
14697   librpmio1
14698   libsdl1.2debian
14699   libsrtp0
14700   libssh-4
14701   libtelepathy-farsight0
14702   libtelepathy-glib0
14703   libtidy-0.99-0
14704   media-player-info
14705   mesa-utils
14706   mono-2.0-gac
14707   mono-gac
14708   mono-runtime
14709   nautilus-sendto
14710   nautilus-sendto-empathy
14711   p7zip-full
14712   pkg-config
14713   python-aptdaemon
14714   python-aptdaemon-gtk
14715   python-axiom
14716   python-beautifulsoup
14717   python-bugbuddy
14718   python-clientform
14719   python-coherence
14720   python-configobj
14721   python-crypto
14722   python-cupshelpers
14723   python-elementtree
14724   python-epsilon
14725   python-evolution
14726   python-feedparser
14727   python-gdata
14728   python-gdbm
14729   python-gst0.10
14730   python-gtkglext1
14731   python-gtksourceview2
14732   python-httplib2
14733   python-louie
14734   python-mako
14735   python-markupsafe
14736   python-mechanize
14737   python-nevow
14738   python-notify
14739   python-opengl
14740   python-openssl
14741   python-pam
14742   python-pkg-resources
14743   python-pyasn1
14744   python-pysqlite2
14745   python-rdflib
14746   python-serial
14747   python-tagpy
14748   python-twisted-bin
14749   python-twisted-conch
14750   python-twisted-core
14751   python-twisted-web
14752   python-utidylib
14753   python-webkit
14754   python-xdg
14755   python-zope.interface
14756   remmina
14757   remmina-plugin-data
14758   remmina-plugin-rdp
14759   remmina-plugin-vnc
14760   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14761   rhythmbox-plugins
14762   rpm-common
14763   rpm2cpio
14764   seahorse-plugins
14765   shotwell
14766   software-center
14767   system-config-printer-udev
14768   telepathy-gabble
14769   telepathy-mission-control-5
14770   telepathy-salut
14771   tomboy
14772   totem
14773   totem-coherence
14774   totem-mozilla
14775   totem-plugins
14776   transmission-common
14777   xdg-user-dirs
14778   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
14779   xserver-xephyr
14780 </p></blockquote>
14781
14782 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14783
14784 <blockquote><p>
14785   cheese
14786   ekiga
14787   eog
14788   epiphany-extensions
14789   evolution-exchange
14790   fast-user-switch-applet
14791   file-roller
14792   gcalctool
14793   gconf-editor
14794   gdm
14795   gedit
14796   gedit-common
14797   gnome-games
14798   gnome-games-data
14799   gnome-nettool
14800   gnome-system-tools
14801   gnome-themes
14802   gnuchess
14803   gucharmap
14804   guile-1.8-libs
14805   libavahi-ui0
14806   libdmx1
14807   libgalago3
14808   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14809   libgtksourceview2.0-0
14810   liblircclient0
14811   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
14812   libspeexdsp1
14813   libsvga1
14814   rhythmbox
14815   seahorse
14816   sound-juicer
14817   system-config-printer
14818   totem-common
14819   transmission-gtk
14820   vinagre
14821   vino
14822 </p></blockquote>
14823
14824 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14825
14826 <blockquote><p>
14827   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14828 </p></blockquote>
14829
14830 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14831
14832 <blockquote><p>
14833 [nothing]
14834 </p></blockquote>
14835
14836 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14837
14838 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14839
14840 <blockquote><p>
14841   ksmserver
14842 </p></blockquote>
14843
14844 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14845
14846 <blockquote><p>
14847   kwin
14848   network-manager-kde
14849 </p></blockquote>
14850
14851 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14852
14853 <blockquote><p>
14854   arts
14855   dolphin
14856   freespacenotifier
14857   google-gadgets-gst
14858   google-gadgets-xul
14859   kappfinder
14860   kcalc
14861   kcharselect
14862   kde-core
14863   kde-plasma-desktop
14864   kde-standard
14865   kde-window-manager
14866   kdeartwork
14867   kdeartwork-emoticons
14868   kdeartwork-style
14869   kdeartwork-theme-icon
14870   kdebase
14871   kdebase-apps
14872   kdebase-workspace
14873   kdebase-workspace-bin
14874   kdebase-workspace-data
14875   kdeeject
14876   kdelibs
14877   kdeplasma-addons
14878   kdeutils
14879   kdewallpapers
14880   kdf
14881   kfloppy
14882   kgpg
14883   khelpcenter4
14884   kinfocenter
14885   konq-plugins-l10n
14886   konqueror-nsplugins
14887   kscreensaver
14888   kscreensaver-xsavers
14889   ktimer
14890   kwrite
14891   libgle3
14892   libkde4-ruby1.8
14893   libkonq5
14894   libkonq5-templates
14895   libnetpbm10
14896   libplasma-ruby
14897   libplasma-ruby1.8
14898   libqt4-ruby1.8
14899   marble-data
14900   marble-plugins
14901   netpbm
14902   nuvola-icon-theme
14903   plasma-dataengines-workspace
14904   plasma-desktop
14905   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14906   plasma-runners-addons
14907   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14908   plasma-scriptengine-python
14909   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14910   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14911   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14912   plasma-scriptengines
14913   plasma-wallpapers-addons
14914   plasma-widget-folderview
14915   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14916   ruby
14917   sweeper
14918   update-notifier-kde
14919   xscreensaver-data-extra
14920   xscreensaver-gl
14921   xscreensaver-gl-extra
14922   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14923 </p></blockquote>
14924
14925 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14926
14927 <blockquote><p>
14928   ark
14929   google-gadgets-common
14930   google-gadgets-qt
14931   htdig
14932   kate
14933   kdebase-bin
14934   kdebase-data
14935   kdepasswd
14936   kfind
14937   klipper
14938   konq-plugins
14939   konqueror
14940   ksysguard
14941   ksysguardd
14942   libarchive1
14943   libcln6
14944   libeet1
14945   libeina-svn-06
14946   libggadget-1.0-0b
14947   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
14948   libgps19
14949   libkdecorations4
14950   libkephal4
14951   libkonq4
14952   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14953   libkscreensaver5
14954   libksgrd4
14955   libksignalplotter4
14956   libkunitconversion4
14957   libkwineffects1a
14958   libmarblewidget4
14959   libntrack-qt4-1
14960   libntrack0
14961   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14962   libplasmaclock4a
14963   libplasmagenericshell4
14964   libprocesscore4a
14965   libprocessui4a
14966   libqalculate5
14967   libqedje0a
14968   libqtruby4shared2
14969   libqzion0a
14970   libruby1.8
14971   libscim8c2a
14972   libsmokekdecore4-3
14973   libsmokekdeui4-3
14974   libsmokekfile3
14975   libsmokekhtml3
14976   libsmokekio3
14977   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
14978   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
14979   libsmokekparts3
14980   libsmokektexteditor3
14981   libsmokekutils3
14982   libsmokenepomuk3
14983   libsmokephonon3
14984   libsmokeplasma3
14985   libsmokeqtcore4-3
14986   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
14987   libsmokeqtgui4-3
14988   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
14989   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
14990   libsmokeqtscript4-3
14991   libsmokeqtsql4-3
14992   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
14993   libsmokeqttest4-3
14994   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
14995   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
14996   libsmokeqtxml4-3
14997   libsmokesolid3
14998   libsmokesoprano3
14999   libtaskmanager4a
15000   libtidy-0.99-0
15001   libweather-ion4a
15002   libxklavier16
15003   libxxf86misc1
15004   okteta
15005   oxygencursors
15006   plasma-dataengines-addons
15007   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
15008   plasma-widget-lancelot
15009   plasma-widgets-addons
15010   plasma-widgets-workspace
15011   polkit-kde-1
15012   ruby1.8
15013   systemsettings
15014   update-notifier-common
15015 </p></blockquote>
15016
15017 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
15018 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
15019 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
15020 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
15021
15022       </div>
15023       <div class="tags">
15024
15025
15026         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>.
15027
15028
15029       </div>
15030     </div>
15031     <div class="padding"></div>
15032
15033     <div class="entry">
15034       <div class="title">
15035         <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>
15036       </div>
15037       <div class="date">
15038         22nd November 2010
15039       </div>
15040       <div class="body">
15041         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
15042 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
15043 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
15044 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
15045 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
15046 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
15047 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
15048 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
15049 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
15050
15051 <p>I found
15052 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
15053 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
15054 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
15055 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
15056 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
15057 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
15058
15059 <pre>
15060 #!/bin/sh
15061
15062 # Based on
15063 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
15064
15065 set -e
15066 set -x
15067
15068 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
15069     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
15070     exit 1
15071 else
15072     host="$1"
15073 fi
15074
15075 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
15076     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
15077     exit 1
15078 fi
15079
15080 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
15081 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15082 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15083 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
15084
15085 img=$host.img
15086 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
15087 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
15088
15089 parted $img mklabel msdos
15090 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
15091 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
15092 parted $img set 1 boot on
15093
15094 modprobe dm-mod
15095 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
15096 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
15097
15098 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
15099 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
15100 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
15101
15102 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
15103 losetup -d /dev/loop0
15104 </pre>
15105
15106 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
15107 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
15108
15109 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
15110 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
15111 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
15112 seem to work just fine.</p>
15113
15114       </div>
15115       <div class="tags">
15116
15117
15118         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>.
15119
15120
15121       </div>
15122     </div>
15123     <div class="padding"></div>
15124
15125     <div class="entry">
15126       <div class="title">
15127         <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>
15128       </div>
15129       <div class="date">
15130         20th November 2010
15131       </div>
15132       <div class="body">
15133         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
15134 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15135 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
15136 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
15137
15138 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
15139 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
15140 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
15141
15142 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
15143
15144 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15145
15146 <blockquote><p>
15147   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
15148   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
15149   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
15150   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
15151   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
15152   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
15153   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
15154   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
15155   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
15156   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
15157   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
15158   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
15159   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
15160   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
15161   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
15162   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
15163   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
15164   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
15165   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
15166   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
15167   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
15168   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
15169   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
15170   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
15171   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
15172   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
15173   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
15174   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
15175   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
15176   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
15177   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
15178   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15179   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
15180   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
15181   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
15182   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
15183   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
15184   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
15185   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
15186   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
15187   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
15188   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
15189   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
15190   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
15191   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
15192   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
15193   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
15194   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
15195   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
15196   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
15197   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
15198   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
15199   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
15200   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
15201   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
15202   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
15203   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
15204   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
15205   zip
15206 </p></blockquote>
15207
15208 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
15209
15210 <blockquote><p>
15211   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
15212   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
15213   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
15214   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
15215   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
15216   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
15217   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
15218   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
15219   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
15220   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
15221   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
15222   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15223   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
15224   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15225   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
15226   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
15227   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
15228   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
15229   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
15230   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
15231   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
15232   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
15233   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
15234   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
15235   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
15236   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
15237   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
15238   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
15239   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
15240 </p></blockquote>
15241
15242 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15243
15244 <blockquote><p>
15245   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15246 </p></blockquote>
15247
15248 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15249
15250 <blockquote><p>
15251 [nothing]
15252 </p></blockquote>
15253
15254 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
15255
15256 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15257
15258 <blockquote><p>
15259   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
15260   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15261   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
15262   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
15263   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
15264   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
15265   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15266   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
15267   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
15268   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15269   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
15270   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
15271   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
15272   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
15273   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
15274   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
15275   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
15276   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
15277   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
15278   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
15279   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
15280   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
15281   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
15282   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
15283   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
15284   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
15285   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
15286   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
15287   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
15288   ttf-sazanami-gothic
15289 </p></blockquote>
15290
15291 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15292
15293 <blockquote><p>
15294   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
15295   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
15296   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
15297   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
15298   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
15299   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
15300   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
15301   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
15302   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
15303   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
15304   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
15305   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
15306   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
15307   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
15308   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15309   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15310   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
15311   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
15312   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15313   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
15314   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
15315   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
15316   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15317   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15318   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
15319   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
15320   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
15321   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
15322   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
15323   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
15324   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
15325   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
15326   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
15327 </p></blockquote>
15328
15329 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15330
15331 <blockquote><p>
15332   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
15333   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
15334   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
15335   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
15336   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
15337   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
15338   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
15339 </p></blockquote>
15340
15341 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15342
15343 <blockquote><p>
15344   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
15345 </p></blockquote>
15346
15347       </div>
15348       <div class="tags">
15349
15350
15351         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>.
15352
15353
15354       </div>
15355     </div>
15356     <div class="padding"></div>
15357
15358     <div class="entry">
15359       <div class="title">
15360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
15361       </div>
15362       <div class="date">
15363         20th November 2010
15364       </div>
15365       <div class="body">
15366         <p>Answering
15367 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
15368 call from the Gnash project</a> for
15369 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
15370 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
15371 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
15372 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
15373 releases out more often.</p>
15374
15375 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
15376 I have considered setting up a <a
15377 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
15378 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
15379 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
15380 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
15381 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
15382 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
15383 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
15384 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
15385 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
15386 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
15387 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
15388 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
15389
15390       </div>
15391       <div class="tags">
15392
15393
15394         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>.
15395
15396
15397       </div>
15398     </div>
15399     <div class="padding"></div>
15400
15401     <div class="entry">
15402       <div class="title">
15403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
15404       </div>
15405       <div class="date">
15406          9th November 2010
15407       </div>
15408       <div class="body">
15409         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
15410
15411 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
15412 3D linked in from
15413 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
15414 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
15415
15416       </div>
15417       <div class="tags">
15418
15419
15420         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>.
15421
15422
15423       </div>
15424     </div>
15425     <div class="padding"></div>
15426
15427     <div class="entry">
15428       <div class="title">
15429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
15430       </div>
15431       <div class="date">
15432          7th November 2010
15433       </div>
15434       <div class="body">
15435         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
15436 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
15437 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
15438 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
15439 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
15440 working using this DVD.</p>
15441
15442 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
15443 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
15444 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
15445 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
15446 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
15447 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
15448 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
15449
15450 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
15451 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
15452 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
15453 Debian archive.</p>
15454
15455 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
15456 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
15457 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
15458 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
15459 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
15460 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
15461 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
15462 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
15463 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
15464 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
15465 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
15466 free X driver should work.</p>
15467
15468 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
15469 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
15470 DVD more useful again.</p>
15471
15472       </div>
15473       <div class="tags">
15474
15475
15476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15477
15478
15479       </div>
15480     </div>
15481     <div class="padding"></div>
15482
15483     <div class="entry">
15484       <div class="title">
15485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
15486       </div>
15487       <div class="date">
15488         24th October 2010
15489       </div>
15490       <div class="body">
15491         <p>Some updates.</p>
15492
15493 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
15494 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
15495 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
15496 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
15497 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
15498 :)</p>
15499
15500 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
15501 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
15502 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
15503 It is called
15504 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
15505 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
15506 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
15507 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
15508 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
15509 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
15510
15511 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
15512 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
15513 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
15514 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
15515 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
15516 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
15517 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
15518 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
15519 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
15520 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
15521
15522       </div>
15523       <div class="tags">
15524
15525
15526         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>.
15527
15528
15529       </div>
15530     </div>
15531     <div class="padding"></div>
15532
15533     <div class="entry">
15534       <div class="title">
15535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
15536       </div>
15537       <div class="date">
15538         19th October 2010
15539       </div>
15540       <div class="body">
15541         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
15542 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
15543 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
15544 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
15545 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
15546 AVM2 flash files.</p>
15547
15548 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
15549 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
15550 following text:</P>
15551
15552 <p><blockquote>
15553
15554   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
15555   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
15556
15557   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
15558
15559   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
15560
15561   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
15562   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
15563   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
15564   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
15565   days. The project web page is available from
15566   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
15567   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
15568   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
15569
15570   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
15571   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
15572   to get this to happen.</p>
15573
15574   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
15575   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
15576
15577 </blockquote></p>
15578
15579 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
15580 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
15581 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
15582 :)</p>
15583
15584       </div>
15585       <div class="tags">
15586
15587
15588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15589
15590
15591       </div>
15592     </div>
15593     <div class="padding"></div>
15594
15595     <div class="entry">
15596       <div class="title">
15597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
15598       </div>
15599       <div class="date">
15600          9th October 2010
15601       </div>
15602       <div class="body">
15603         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
15604 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
15605 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
15606 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
15607 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
15608 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
15609 robots.</p>
15610
15611 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
15612 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
15613 a few less important features too.</p>
15614
15615 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
15616 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
15617 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
15618 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
15619
15620 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
15621 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
15622 source or binary package:</p>
15623
15624 <p><ul>
15625 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
15626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
15627 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
15628 </ul></p>
15629
15630 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
15631 please let me know.</p>
15632
15633       </div>
15634       <div class="tags">
15635
15636
15637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
15638
15639
15640       </div>
15641     </div>
15642     <div class="padding"></div>
15643
15644     <div class="entry">
15645       <div class="title">
15646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
15647       </div>
15648       <div class="date">
15649          3rd October 2010
15650       </div>
15651       <div class="body">
15652         <p><ul>
15653
15654 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
15655 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
15656
15657 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
15658 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
15659 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
15660
15661 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
15662 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
15663 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
15664 simple setup.
15665
15666 </ul></p>
15667
15668       </div>
15669       <div class="tags">
15670
15671
15672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15673
15674
15675       </div>
15676     </div>
15677     <div class="padding"></div>
15678
15679     <div class="entry">
15680       <div class="title">
15681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
15682       </div>
15683       <div class="date">
15684          9th September 2010
15685       </div>
15686       <div class="body">
15687         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
15688 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
15689 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
15690 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
15691 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
15692 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
15693 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
15694 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
15695 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
15696
15697 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
15698 written:</p>
15699
15700 <blockquote>
15701 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
15702 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
15703 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
15704 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
15705 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
15706
15707 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
15708 standard.</p>
15709 </blockquote>
15710
15711 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
15712 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
15713 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
15714 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
15715
15716 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
15717 read
15718 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
15719 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
15720 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
15721 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
15722 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
15723 the issue.  The solution is to support the
15724 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
15725 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
15726 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
15727
15728       </div>
15729       <div class="tags">
15730
15731
15732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15733
15734
15735       </div>
15736     </div>
15737     <div class="padding"></div>
15738
15739     <div class="entry">
15740       <div class="title">
15741         <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>
15742       </div>
15743       <div class="date">
15744          4th September 2010
15745       </div>
15746       <div class="body">
15747         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
15748 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
15749 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
15750 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
15751 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
15752 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
15753 installed.</p>
15754
15755 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
15756 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
15757 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
15758 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
15759 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15760 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
15761 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
15762 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
15763 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
15764
15765 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
15766 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
15767 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
15768 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
15769 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
15770 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
15771 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
15772 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
15773 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
15774 pages they want to visit.</p>
15775
15776 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
15777 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
15778 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
15779 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
15780 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
15781 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
15782 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
15783 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
15784 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
15785 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
15786 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
15787
15788       </div>
15789       <div class="tags">
15790
15791
15792         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>.
15793
15794
15795       </div>
15796     </div>
15797     <div class="padding"></div>
15798
15799     <div class="entry">
15800       <div class="title">
15801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
15802       </div>
15803       <div class="date">
15804          1st September 2010
15805       </div>
15806       <div class="body">
15807         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
15808 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
15809 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
15810 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
15811 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
15812 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
15813 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
15814 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
15815 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
15816 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
15817 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
15818 drive around.</p>
15819
15820 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
15821 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
15822
15823 <p><pre>
15824 use Spykee;
15825 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
15826 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
15827 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
15828 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
15829 $spykee->left();
15830 sleep 2;
15831 $spykee->right();
15832 sleep 2;
15833 $spykee->forward();
15834 sleep 2;
15835 $spykee->back();
15836 sleep 2;
15837 $spykee->stop();
15838 </pre></p>
15839
15840 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
15841 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
15842 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
15843 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
15844 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
15845 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
15846 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
15847 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
15848 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
15849 going. :).</p>
15850
15851 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
15852 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
15853 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
15854 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
15855
15856       </div>
15857       <div class="tags">
15858
15859
15860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
15861
15862
15863       </div>
15864     </div>
15865     <div class="padding"></div>
15866
15867     <div class="entry">
15868       <div class="title">
15869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
15870       </div>
15871       <div class="date">
15872         30th August 2010
15873       </div>
15874       <div class="body">
15875         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
15876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
15877 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
15878 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
15879 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
15880 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
15881 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
15882
15883 <pre>
15884 % ln foo bar
15885 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
15886 %
15887 </pre>
15888
15889 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
15890 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
15891 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
15892 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
15893 nevertheless. :)</p>
15894
15895 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
15896 git from
15897 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
15898
15899       </div>
15900       <div class="tags">
15901
15902
15903         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15904
15905
15906       </div>
15907     </div>
15908     <div class="padding"></div>
15909
15910     <div class="entry">
15911       <div class="title">
15912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
15913       </div>
15914       <div class="date">
15915         26th August 2010
15916       </div>
15917       <div class="body">
15918         <p>My file system sematics program
15919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
15920 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
15921 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
15922 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
15923 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
15924 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
15925 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
15926 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
15927 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
15928 script:</p>
15929
15930 <pre>
15931 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
15932   mode_t retval = 0;
15933   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
15934   if (-1 != fd) {
15935     unlink(name);
15936     struct stat statbuf;
15937     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
15938       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
15939     }
15940     close(fd);
15941   }
15942   return retval;
15943 }
15944
15945 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
15946 int test_umask(void) {
15947   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
15948
15949   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
15950   mode_t newmode;
15951   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15952     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
15953            newmode);
15954   }
15955   umask(007);
15956   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15957     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
15958            newmode);
15959   }
15960
15961   umask (orig_umask);
15962   return 0;
15963 }
15964
15965 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15966   [...]
15967   test_umask();
15968   return 0;
15969 }
15970 </pre>
15971
15972 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
15973
15974 <pre>
15975 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15976 info: testing symlink creation
15977 info: testing subdirectory creation
15978 info: testing fcntl locking
15979   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15980   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15981   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15982   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15983   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15984   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15985 info: testing umask effect on file creation
15986 </pre>
15987
15988 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
15989 result:</p>
15990
15991 <pre>
15992 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15993 info: testing symlink creation
15994 info: testing subdirectory creation
15995 info: testing fcntl locking
15996   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15997   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15998   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15999   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16000   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16001   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16002 info: testing umask effect on file creation
16003   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
16004   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
16005 </pre>
16006
16007 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
16008 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
16009 directory.</p>
16010
16011 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
16012 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
16013
16014 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16015 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16016 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16017
16018       </div>
16019       <div class="tags">
16020
16021
16022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16023
16024
16025       </div>
16026     </div>
16027     <div class="padding"></div>
16028
16029     <div class="entry">
16030       <div class="title">
16031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
16032       </div>
16033       <div class="date">
16034         15th August 2010
16035       </div>
16036       <div class="body">
16037         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
16038 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
16039 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
16040 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
16041 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
16042 long time.</p>
16043
16044       </div>
16045       <div class="tags">
16046
16047
16048         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16049
16050
16051       </div>
16052     </div>
16053     <div class="padding"></div>
16054
16055     <div class="entry">
16056       <div class="title">
16057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
16058       </div>
16059       <div class="date">
16060          9th August 2010
16061       </div>
16062       <div class="body">
16063         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
16064 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
16065 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
16066 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
16067 generated configuration.</p>
16068
16069 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
16070 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
16071 without any manual configuration.</p>
16072
16073 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
16074 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
16075 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
16076 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
16077 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
16078 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
16079 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
16080 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
16081 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
16082 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
16083 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
16084 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
16085 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
16086 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
16087 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
16088 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
16089 use.</p>
16090
16091 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
16092 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
16093 working properly out of the box:</p>
16094
16095 <ul>
16096 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
16097 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
16098 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
16099 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
16100 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
16101 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
16102 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
16103 </ul>
16104
16105 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
16106
16107 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
16108 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
16109 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
16110 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
16111 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
16112
16113 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
16114 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
16115 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
16116 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
16117 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
16118 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
16119 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
16120 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
16121
16122 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
16123 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
16124 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
16125 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
16126 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
16127 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
16128 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
16129 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
16130 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
16131 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
16132 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
16133 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
16134 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
16135 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
16136 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
16137 current DNS domain is used.</p>
16138
16139 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
16140 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
16141 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
16142 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
16143 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
16144 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
16145 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
16146 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
16147 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
16148 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
16149 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
16150 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
16151 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
16152
16153 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
16154 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
16155 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
16156 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
16157 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
16158 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
16159 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
16160 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
16161 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
16162 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
16163 do for now. :)</p>
16164
16165 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
16166 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
16167 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
16168 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
16169 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
16170 yet.</p>
16171
16172 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
16173 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16174
16175 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
16176 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
16177 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
16178 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
16179
16180       </div>
16181       <div class="tags">
16182
16183
16184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16185
16186
16187       </div>
16188     </div>
16189     <div class="padding"></div>
16190
16191     <div class="entry">
16192       <div class="title">
16193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
16194       </div>
16195       <div class="date">
16196          8th August 2010
16197       </div>
16198       <div class="body">
16199         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
16200 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
16201 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
16202 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
16203 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
16204 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
16205 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
16206
16207 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
16208 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
16209 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
16210 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
16211 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
16212 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
16213 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
16214
16215 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
16216 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
16217 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
16218 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
16219 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
16220
16221 <pre>
16222 /*
16223  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
16224  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
16225  * directory.
16226  * License: GPL v2 or later
16227  *
16228  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
16229  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
16230 */
16231
16232 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
16233 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
16234 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
16235
16236 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
16237
16238 #include &lt;errno.h>
16239 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
16240 #include &lt;stdio.h>
16241 #include &lt;string.h>
16242 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
16243 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
16244 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
16245 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
16246 #include &lt;unistd.h>
16247
16248 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
16249 /*
16250  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
16251  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
16252  * below.
16253  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
16254  */
16255 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
16256 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
16257   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
16258 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
16259   char *zErrMsg;
16260   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
16261   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
16262   unlink(name);
16263   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
16264   if( rc ){
16265     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
16266     sqlite3_close(db);
16267     return -1;
16268   }
16269
16270   /* create tables */
16271   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
16272   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
16273     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
16274     sqlite3_close(db);
16275     return -1;
16276   }
16277   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
16278   sqlite3_close(db);
16279   return 0;
16280 }
16281 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
16282
16283 /*
16284  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
16285  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
16286  * done in the sqlite3 library.
16287  * See also
16288  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
16289  * POSIX specification
16290  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
16291  */
16292 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
16293   struct flock fl;
16294   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
16295   unlink(name);
16296   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
16297   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
16298
16299   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
16300   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
16301   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16302   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16303   fl.l_len    = 1;
16304   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
16305   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16306
16307   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
16308   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
16309   fl.l_len    = 510;
16310   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
16311   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16312
16313   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16314   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16315   fl.l_len    = 1;
16316   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
16317   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16318
16319   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16320   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16321   fl.l_len    = 1;
16322   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
16323   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16324
16325   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
16326   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
16327   fl.l_len    = 510;
16328   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16329
16330   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
16331   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16332   fl.l_len    = 2;
16333   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
16334   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16335
16336   close(fd);
16337   return 0;
16338 }
16339
16340 /*
16341  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
16342  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
16343  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
16344  * slowing down file operations.
16345  */
16346 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
16347 #define LEVELS 5
16348   char *path = strdup("test");
16349   char *dirs[LEVELS];
16350   int level;
16351   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
16352   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
16353     char *newpath = NULL;
16354     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
16355       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
16356              path, strerror(errno));
16357       break;
16358     }
16359     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
16360     free(path);
16361     path = newpath;
16362   }
16363   return 0;
16364 }
16365
16366 /*
16367  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
16368  * KDE.
16369  */
16370 int test_symlinks(void) {
16371   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
16372   unlink("symlink");
16373   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
16374     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
16375   return 0;
16376 }
16377
16378 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
16379   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
16380   test_symlinks();
16381   test_subdirectory_creation();
16382 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
16383   test_sqlite_open();
16384 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
16385   test_gcompris_locking();
16386   return 0;
16387 }
16388 </pre>
16389
16390 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
16391 this:</p>
16392
16393 <pre>
16394 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16395 info: testing symlink creation
16396 info: testing subdirectory creation
16397 info: sqlite worked
16398 info: testing fcntl locking
16399   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16400   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16401   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16402   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16403   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16404   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16405 </pre>
16406
16407 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
16408 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
16409 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
16410 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
16411 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
16412 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
16413 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
16414 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
16415
16416 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
16417 it. :)</p>
16418
16419 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16420 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16421 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16422
16423       </div>
16424       <div class="tags">
16425
16426
16427         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16428
16429
16430       </div>
16431     </div>
16432     <div class="padding"></div>
16433
16434     <div class="entry">
16435       <div class="title">
16436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
16437       </div>
16438       <div class="date">
16439          7th August 2010
16440       </div>
16441       <div class="body">
16442         <p>A few days ago, I
16443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
16444 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
16445 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
16446 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
16447 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
16448 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
16449 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
16450 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
16451 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
16452
16453 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
16454 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
16455 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
16456 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
16457 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
16458 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
16459 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
16460 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
16461 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
16462 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
16463 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
16464 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
16465 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
16466 gave it a IP address.</p>
16467
16468 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
16469 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
16470 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
16471 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
16472 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
16473 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
16474 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
16475 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
16476
16477 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
16478 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
16479 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
16480 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
16481 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
16482 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
16483
16484 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
16485 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
16486 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
16487 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
16488 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
16489 with UID and GID values.</p>
16490
16491 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
16492 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16493
16494       </div>
16495       <div class="tags">
16496
16497
16498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16499
16500
16501       </div>
16502     </div>
16503     <div class="padding"></div>
16504
16505     <div class="entry">
16506       <div class="title">
16507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
16508       </div>
16509       <div class="date">
16510          3rd August 2010
16511       </div>
16512       <div class="body">
16513         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
16514 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
16515 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
16516 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
16517 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
16518 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
16519 servers.</p>
16520
16521 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
16522 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
16523 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
16524 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
16525 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
16526 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
16527 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
16528 .uio.no.</p>
16529
16530 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
16531 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
16532 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
16533 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
16534 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
16535 university servers.</p>
16536
16537 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
16538 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
16539 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
16540 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
16541 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
16542 uses.</p>
16543
16544       </div>
16545       <div class="tags">
16546
16547
16548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16549
16550
16551       </div>
16552     </div>
16553     <div class="padding"></div>
16554
16555     <div class="entry">
16556       <div class="title">
16557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
16558       </div>
16559       <div class="date">
16560         27th July 2010
16561       </div>
16562       <div class="body">
16563         <p>I discovered this while doing
16564 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
16565 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
16566 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
16567 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
16568 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
16569
16570 <p>An example is from todays
16571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
16572 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
16573 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
16574 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
16575 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
16576 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
16577 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
16578
16579 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
16580
16581 <blockquote><pre>
16582 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
16583  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
16584   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
16585 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
16586  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
16587 </pre></blockquote>
16588
16589 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
16590 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
16591 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
16592 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
16593 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
16594 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
16595 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
16596 of dependency loops.</p>
16597
16598 <p>Thanks to
16599 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
16600 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
16601 dependencies
16602 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
16603 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
16604
16605 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
16606 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
16607 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
16608 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
16609 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
16610 it.</p>
16611
16612       </div>
16613       <div class="tags">
16614
16615
16616         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>.
16617
16618
16619       </div>
16620     </div>
16621     <div class="padding"></div>
16622
16623     <div class="entry">
16624       <div class="title">
16625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
16626       </div>
16627       <div class="date">
16628         27th July 2010
16629       </div>
16630       <div class="body">
16631         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
16632 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
16633 completed.</p>
16634
16635 <blockquote>
16636 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
16637 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
16638 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
16639 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
16640 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
16641 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
16642 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
16643 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
16644
16645 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
16646 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
16647 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
16648
16649 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
16650 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
16651 much.</p>
16652
16653 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
16654
16655 <ul>
16656 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
16657 <ul>
16658   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
16659          combination with some new artwork
16660   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
16661   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
16662   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
16663   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
16664   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
16665   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
16666   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
16667   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
16668   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
16669 </ul></li>
16670 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
16671     Enabled for:
16672 <ul>
16673   <li>PAM
16674   <li>LDAP
16675   <li>IMAP
16676   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
16677 </ul>
16678 </li>
16679 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
16680 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
16681     fetched from LDAP.</li>
16682 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
16683 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
16684 </ul>
16685 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
16686
16687 <ul>
16688 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
16689     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
16690     for testing.</li>
16691 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
16692     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
16693     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
16694 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
16695 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
16696 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
16697 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
16698     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
16699 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
16700     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
16701     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
16702 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
16703     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
16704     and help out with translations.</li>
16705 </ul>
16706
16707 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
16708
16709 <ul>
16710 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
16711 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
16712 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16713 </ul>
16714 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
16715
16716 <ul>
16717 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
16718 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
16719 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16720 </ul>
16721
16722 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
16723 get closer to the final release.</p>
16724
16725 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
16726
16727 <ul>
16728 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16729 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16730 </ul>
16731
16732 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
16733 <ul>
16734 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16735 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16736 </ul>
16737 <p>How to report bugs:
16738 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
16739
16740 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
16741 </blockquote>
16742
16743       </div>
16744       <div class="tags">
16745
16746
16747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16748
16749
16750       </div>
16751     </div>
16752     <div class="padding"></div>
16753
16754     <div class="entry">
16755       <div class="title">
16756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
16757       </div>
16758       <div class="date">
16759         25th July 2010
16760       </div>
16761       <div class="body">
16762         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
16763 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
16764 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
16765 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
16766 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
16767
16768 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
16769 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
16770 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
16771 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
16772 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
16773 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
16774 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
16775
16776 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
16777 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
16778 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
16779 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
16780 up. :)</p>
16781
16782 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
16783 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
16784 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
16785
16786 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
16787 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
16788 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
16789 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
16790 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
16791 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
16792 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
16793 release another day.</p>
16794
16795 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
16796 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16797
16798       </div>
16799       <div class="tags">
16800
16801
16802         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16803
16804
16805       </div>
16806     </div>
16807     <div class="padding"></div>
16808
16809     <div class="entry">
16810       <div class="title">
16811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
16812       </div>
16813       <div class="date">
16814         18th July 2010
16815       </div>
16816       <div class="body">
16817         <p>Thanks to
16818 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
16819 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
16820 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
16821 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
16822 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
16823 only available from the development server, until more experience is
16824 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
16825
16826 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
16827 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
16828 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
16829 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
16830 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
16831 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
16832 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
16833
16834       </div>
16835       <div class="tags">
16836
16837
16838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16839
16840
16841       </div>
16842     </div>
16843     <div class="padding"></div>
16844
16845     <div class="entry">
16846       <div class="title">
16847         <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>
16848       </div>
16849       <div class="date">
16850         17th July 2010
16851       </div>
16852       <div class="body">
16853         <p>This is a
16854 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
16855 on my
16856 <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
16857 work</a> on
16858 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
16859 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
16860
16861 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
16862 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
16863 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
16864 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
16865
16866 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
16867 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
16868 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
16869
16870 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
16871
16872 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
16873 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
16874 the web.
16875
16876 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
16877 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
16878 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
16879 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
16880 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
16881 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
16882
16883 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
16884 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
16885 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
16886 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
16887 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
16888 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
16889 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
16890 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
16891 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
16892 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
16893 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
16894 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
16895 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
16896 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
16897 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
16898 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
16899
16900 <blockquote><pre>
16901 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16902   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16903   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16904   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16905   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16906   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16907   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16908
16909 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16910   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16911   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
16912   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
16913   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
16914   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
16915 </pre></blockquote>
16916
16917 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
16918 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
16919 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
16920 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16921 also exist.</p>
16922
16923 <blockquote><pre>
16924 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16925 objectclass: top
16926 objectclass: dnsdomain
16927 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16928 dc: tjener
16929 arecord: 10.0.2.2
16930 associateddomain: tjener.intern
16931
16932 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16933 objectclass: top
16934 objectclass: dnsdomain2
16935 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16936 dc: 2
16937 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
16938 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
16939 </pre></blockquote>
16940
16941 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
16942 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
16943 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
16944 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
16945 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
16946 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
16947 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
16948 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
16949 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
16950 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
16951 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
16952 instead.</p>
16953
16954 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
16955 like this:</p>
16956
16957 <blockquote><pre>
16958 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16959   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16960   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16961   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16962   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16963   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16964
16965 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16966   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
16967 </pre></blockquote>
16968
16969 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
16970 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
16971 reverse lookups.</p>
16972
16973 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
16974 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
16975 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
16976 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
16977
16978 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
16979 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
16980 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
16981
16982 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
16983 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
16984 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
16985 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
16986 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
16987
16988 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
16989 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
16990 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
16991 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
16992 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
16993
16994 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
16995 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
16996 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
16997 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
16998 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
16999 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
17000
17001 <blockquote><pre>
17002 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
17003     SUP top
17004     AUXILIARY
17005     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
17006           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
17007           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
17008           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
17009           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
17010     ))
17011 </pre></blockquote>
17012
17013 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
17014 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
17015 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
17016 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
17017 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
17018 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
17019
17020 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
17021
17022 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
17023 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
17024 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
17025 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
17026 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
17027
17028 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
17029 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
17030 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
17031 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
17032
17033 <blockquote><pre>
17034 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
17035 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
17036 </pre></blockquote>
17037
17038 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
17039 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
17040 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
17041 search result is this entry:</p>
17042
17043 <blockquote><pre>
17044 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17045 cn: dhcp
17046 objectClass: top
17047 objectClass: dhcpServer
17048 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17049 </pre></blockquote>
17050
17051 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
17052 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
17053 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
17054 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
17055 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
17056 The search result is this entry:</p>
17057
17058 <blockquote><pre>
17059 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17060 cn: DHCP Config
17061 objectClass: top
17062 objectClass: dhcpService
17063 objectClass: dhcpOptions
17064 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17065 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
17066 dhcpStatements: authoritative
17067 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
17068 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
17069 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
17070 </pre></blockquote>
17071
17072 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
17073 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
17074 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
17075 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
17076 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
17077 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
17078 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
17079 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
17080 related computer objects.</p>
17081
17082 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
17083 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
17084 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
17085 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
17086 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
17087 like:</p>
17088
17089 <blockquote><pre>
17090 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17091 cn: hostname
17092 objectClass: top
17093 objectClass: dhcpHost
17094 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17095 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
17096 </pre></blockquote>
17097
17098 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
17099 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
17100 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
17101 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
17102 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
17103 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
17104 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
17105 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
17106 structural object class.
17107
17108 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17109
17110 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
17111 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
17112 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
17113 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
17114 in the configuration.</p>
17115
17116 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
17117 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
17118 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
17119 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
17120 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
17121 structure.</p>
17122
17123 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
17124 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
17125
17126 <blockquote><pre>
17127 ou=services
17128   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
17129     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
17130     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17131       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17132         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17133     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17134       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17135         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17136     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
17137       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
17138 </pre></blockquote>
17139
17140 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
17141 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
17142 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
17143 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
17144
17145 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
17146 like this:</p>
17147
17148 <blockquote><pre>
17149 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17150 dc: hostname
17151 objectClass: top
17152 objectClass: dhcpHost
17153 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17154 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
17155 associateddomain: hostname.intern
17156 arecord: 10.11.12.13
17157 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17158 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
17159 </pre></blockquote>
17160
17161 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
17162 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
17163 auxiliary object class.</p>
17164
17165       </div>
17166       <div class="tags">
17167
17168
17169         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>.
17170
17171
17172       </div>
17173     </div>
17174     <div class="padding"></div>
17175
17176     <div class="entry">
17177       <div class="title">
17178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
17179       </div>
17180       <div class="date">
17181         14th July 2010
17182       </div>
17183       <div class="body">
17184         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
17185 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
17186 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
17187 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
17188 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
17189
17190 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
17191 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
17192
17193 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
17194 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
17195 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
17196 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
17197 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
17198 to a slave DNS server.</p>
17199
17200 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
17201 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
17202 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
17203 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
17204 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
17205 seem to work.</p>
17206
17207 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
17208 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
17209 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
17210 this:</p>
17211
17212 <blockquote><pre>
17213   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17214   cn: hostname
17215   objectClass: dhcphost
17216   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17217   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
17218   associateddomain: hostname.intern
17219   arecord: 10.11.12.13
17220   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17221   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
17222   ldapconfigsound: Y
17223 </pre></blockquote>
17224
17225 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
17226 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
17227 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
17228 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
17229
17230 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
17231 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
17232 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
17233 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
17234 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
17235 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
17236 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
17237 might be a good place to put it.</p>
17238
17239 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17240 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17241
17242       </div>
17243       <div class="tags">
17244
17245
17246         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>.
17247
17248
17249       </div>
17250     </div>
17251     <div class="padding"></div>
17252
17253     <div class="entry">
17254       <div class="title">
17255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
17256       </div>
17257       <div class="date">
17258         11th July 2010
17259       </div>
17260       <div class="body">
17261         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
17262 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
17263 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
17264 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
17265
17266 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
17267 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
17268 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
17269 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
17270 LTSP clients.</p>
17271
17272 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
17273 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
17274 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
17275
17276 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
17277 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
17278 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
17279
17280 <blockquote><pre>
17281 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
17282 #
17283 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
17284 #
17285 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
17286 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
17287 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
17288 #
17289 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
17290 # existence of attribute names.
17291 #
17292 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
17293 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
17294 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
17295 #
17296 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
17297 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
17298 #
17299 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
17300 #     SUP top
17301 #     AUXILIARY
17302 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
17303
17304 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
17305 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
17306     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
17307     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
17308         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
17309         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
17310             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
17311             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
17312             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
17313             # bass value on to clients
17314             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
17315         done
17316     done
17317 fi
17318 </pre></blockquote>
17319
17320 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
17321 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
17322 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
17323 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
17324 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
17325
17326 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17327 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17328
17329 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
17330 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
17331 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
17332 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
17333 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
17334 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
17335
17336       </div>
17337       <div class="tags">
17338
17339
17340         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>.
17341
17342
17343       </div>
17344     </div>
17345     <div class="padding"></div>
17346
17347     <div class="entry">
17348       <div class="title">
17349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
17350       </div>
17351       <div class="date">
17352          9th July 2010
17353       </div>
17354       <div class="body">
17355         <p>Since
17356 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
17357 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
17358 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
17359 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
17360 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
17361 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
17362 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
17363 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
17364 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
17365 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
17366 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
17367 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
17368 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
17369
17370       </div>
17371       <div class="tags">
17372
17373
17374         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>.
17375
17376
17377       </div>
17378     </div>
17379     <div class="padding"></div>
17380
17381     <div class="entry">
17382       <div class="title">
17383         <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>
17384       </div>
17385       <div class="date">
17386          3rd July 2010
17387       </div>
17388       <div class="body">
17389         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
17390 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
17391 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
17392 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
17393 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
17394 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
17395 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
17396 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
17397
17398 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
17399 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
17400 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
17401 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
17402 publish the difference.</p>
17403
17404 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17405
17406 <blockquote><p>
17407   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17408   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
17409   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
17410   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17411   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
17412   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
17413   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
17414   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
17415 </p></blockquote>
17416
17417 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17418
17419 <blockquote><p>
17420   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
17421   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
17422   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
17423   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
17424   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
17425   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
17426   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17427   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17428   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17429   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
17430   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
17431   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
17432   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
17433   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
17434   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
17435   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17436   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
17437   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
17438   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
17439   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
17440 </p></blockquote>
17441
17442 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17443
17444 <blockquote><p>
17445   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
17446   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
17447   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17448   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17449   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
17450   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
17451   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
17452   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17453   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17454   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17455   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17456   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
17457   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
17458   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
17459   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
17460   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
17461   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
17462   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
17463   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
17464   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
17465   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
17466 </p></blockquote>
17467
17468 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17469
17470 <blockquote><p>
17471   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
17472   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
17473   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
17474 </p></blockquote>
17475
17476 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
17477 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
17478 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
17479 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
17480 the difference somewhat.
17481
17482       </div>
17483       <div class="tags">
17484
17485
17486         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>.
17487
17488
17489       </div>
17490     </div>
17491     <div class="padding"></div>
17492
17493     <div class="entry">
17494       <div class="title">
17495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
17496       </div>
17497       <div class="date">
17498          1st July 2010
17499       </div>
17500       <div class="body">
17501         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
17502 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
17503 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
17504 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
17505 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
17506 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
17507 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
17508 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
17509 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
17510
17511 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
17512
17513 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
17514 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
17515 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
17516 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
17517 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
17518 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
17519 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
17520 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
17521 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
17522 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
17523 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
17524 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
17525 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
17526 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
17527 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
17528
17529 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
17530
17531 <blockquote><pre>
17532 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
17533 </pre></blockquote>
17534
17535 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
17536 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
17537 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
17538 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
17539 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
17540 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
17541 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
17542 on how to get this working.</p>
17543
17544 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
17545 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
17546 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
17547 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
17548 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
17549 instructions I found in the
17550 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
17551 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
17552
17553 <blockquote><pre>
17554         debug-level             0
17555         reload-count            unlimited
17556         paranoia                no
17557
17558         enable-cache            passwd          yes
17559         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
17560         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
17561         suggested-size          passwd          211
17562         check-files             passwd          yes
17563         persistent              passwd          yes
17564         shared                  passwd          yes
17565         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
17566         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
17567
17568         enable-cache            group           yes
17569         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
17570         negative-time-to-live   group           20
17571         suggested-size          group           211
17572         check-files             group           yes
17573         persistent              group           yes
17574         shared                  group           yes
17575         max-db-size             group           33554432
17576         auto-propagate          group           yes
17577
17578         enable-cache            hosts           no
17579         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
17580         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
17581         suggested-size          hosts           211
17582         check-files             hosts           yes
17583         persistent              hosts           yes
17584         shared                  hosts           yes
17585         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
17586
17587         enable-cache            services        yes
17588         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
17589         negative-time-to-live   services        20
17590         suggested-size          services        211
17591         check-files             services        yes
17592         persistent              services        yes
17593         shared                  services        yes
17594         max-db-size             services        33554432
17595 </pre></blockquote>
17596
17597 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
17598 automatically like the one provided in
17599 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
17600 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
17601 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
17602 look like this:</p>
17603
17604 <blockquote><pre>
17605 passwd:         files ldap
17606 group:          files ldap
17607 shadow:         files ldap
17608 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
17609 networks:       files
17610 protocols:      files
17611 services:       files
17612 ethers:         files
17613 rpc:            files
17614 netgroup:       files ldap
17615 </pre></blockquote>
17616
17617 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
17618 shadow and netgroup.</p>
17619
17620 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
17621 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
17622 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
17623 attributes cached.
17624
17625 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
17626   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
17627
17628 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
17629 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
17630 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
17631 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
17632 discovered sssd.</p>
17633
17634 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
17635
17636 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
17637 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
17638 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
17639 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
17640 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
17641 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
17642 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
17643 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
17644 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
17645 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
17646 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
17647 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
17648 version 1.2 is now in testing.
17649
17650 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
17651 roaming setup I want</p>
17652
17653 <blockquote><pre>
17654 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
17655 </pre></blockquote>
17656
17657 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
17658 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
17659
17660 <blockquote><pre>
17661 [sssd]
17662 config_file_version = 2
17663 reconnection_retries = 3
17664 sbus_timeout = 30
17665 services = nss, pam
17666 domains = INTERN
17667
17668 [nss]
17669 filter_groups = root
17670 filter_users = root
17671 reconnection_retries = 3
17672
17673 [pam]
17674 reconnection_retries = 3
17675
17676 [domain/INTERN]
17677 enumerate = false
17678 cache_credentials = true
17679
17680 id_provider = ldap
17681 auth_provider = ldap
17682 chpass_provider = ldap
17683
17684 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
17685 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17686 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
17687 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
17688 </pre></blockquote>
17689
17690 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
17691 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
17692
17693 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
17694 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
17695 modify it manually.</p>
17696
17697 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17698 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17699
17700       </div>
17701       <div class="tags">
17702
17703
17704         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17705
17706
17707       </div>
17708     </div>
17709     <div class="padding"></div>
17710
17711     <div class="entry">
17712       <div class="title">
17713         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
17714       </div>
17715       <div class="date">
17716         28th June 2010
17717       </div>
17718       <div class="body">
17719         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
17720 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
17721 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
17722 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
17723 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
17724 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
17725 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
17726 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
17727 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
17728 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
17729
17730 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
17731 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
17732 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
17733 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
17734 released.</p>
17735
17736 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
17737 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
17738 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
17739 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
17740
17741 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
17742 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17743
17744 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
17745 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
17746 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
17747 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
17748 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
17749
17750       </div>
17751       <div class="tags">
17752
17753
17754         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>.
17755
17756
17757       </div>
17758     </div>
17759     <div class="padding"></div>
17760
17761     <div class="entry">
17762       <div class="title">
17763         <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>
17764       </div>
17765       <div class="date">
17766         24th June 2010
17767       </div>
17768       <div class="body">
17769         <p>A while back, I
17770 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
17771 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
17772 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
17773 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
17774
17775 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
17776 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
17777 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
17778 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
17779
17780 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
17781 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
17782 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
17783 Debian Edu.</p>
17784
17785 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
17786 the
17787 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
17788 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
17789 available today from IETF.</p>
17790
17791 <pre>
17792 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
17793 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
17794 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
17795  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
17796         NAME 'dhcpHost'
17797         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
17798 -       SUP top
17799 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
17800         MUST cn
17801         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
17802         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
17803 </pre>
17804
17805 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
17806 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
17807 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
17808
17809 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17810 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17811
17812       </div>
17813       <div class="tags">
17814
17815
17816         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>.
17817
17818
17819       </div>
17820     </div>
17821     <div class="padding"></div>
17822
17823     <div class="entry">
17824       <div class="title">
17825         <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>
17826       </div>
17827       <div class="date">
17828         16th June 2010
17829       </div>
17830       <div class="body">
17831         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
17832 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
17833 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
17834 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
17835 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
17836 this:
17837
17838 <blockquote><pre>
17839 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17840 tasksel --new-install
17841 </pre></blockquote>
17842
17843 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
17844 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
17845 any output what so ever.
17846
17847 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
17848 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
17849 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
17850 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
17851 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
17852 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
17853 code like this:
17854
17855 <blockquote><pre>
17856 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17857 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
17858 $cmd
17859 </pre></blockquote>
17860
17861 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
17862 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
17863 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
17864 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
17865 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
17866 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
17867 installation.</p>
17868
17869 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
17870 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
17871 like this.</p>
17872
17873       </div>
17874       <div class="tags">
17875
17876
17877         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>.
17878
17879
17880       </div>
17881     </div>
17882     <div class="padding"></div>
17883
17884     <div class="entry">
17885       <div class="title">
17886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
17887       </div>
17888       <div class="date">
17889         13th June 2010
17890       </div>
17891       <div class="body">
17892         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
17893 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
17894 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
17895 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
17896 pages.</p>
17897
17898 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
17899 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
17900 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
17901 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
17902 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
17903 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
17904 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
17905 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
17906 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
17907 see how the project is doing.</p>
17908
17909 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
17910 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
17911 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
17912 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
17913 Windows.  This is great.</p>
17914
17915       </div>
17916       <div class="tags">
17917
17918
17919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17920
17921
17922       </div>
17923     </div>
17924     <div class="padding"></div>
17925
17926     <div class="entry">
17927       <div class="title">
17928         <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>
17929       </div>
17930       <div class="date">
17931         13th June 2010
17932       </div>
17933       <div class="body">
17934         <p>My
17935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
17936 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
17937 finally made the upgrade logs available from
17938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
17939 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
17940 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
17941 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
17942
17943 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
17944 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
17945 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
17946 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
17947 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
17948 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
17949 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
17950 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
17951
17952 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
17953 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
17954 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
17955 too surprising.</p>
17956
17957 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
17958 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
17959 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
17960 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
17961 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
17962 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
17963 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
17964 continue.</p>
17965
17966 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
17967 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
17968   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
17969   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
17970   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
17971   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
17972   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
17973   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17974   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17975   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
17976   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
17977   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
17978   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
17979   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17980   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17981   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17982   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17983   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17984   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
17985   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
17986   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
17987   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
17988   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
17989   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
17990   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
17991   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
17992   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17993   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17994   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
17995   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
17996
17997 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
17998
17999 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
18000   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
18001   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
18002   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
18003   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18004   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
18005   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
18006   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
18007   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
18008   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
18009   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18010   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
18011   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
18012   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
18013   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
18014   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
18015   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
18016   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
18017   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
18018   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
18019   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
18020   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
18021   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
18022   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
18023   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18024   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
18025   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
18026   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
18027   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
18028   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18029   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18030   zip</p>
18031
18032 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
18033
18034 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
18035   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
18036   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
18037   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
18038   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
18039   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
18040   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18041   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18042   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
18043   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
18044   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
18045   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
18046   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18047   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18048   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18049   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18050   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18051   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
18052   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
18053   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
18054   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
18055   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
18056   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
18057   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
18058   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
18059   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
18060   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
18061   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
18062
18063 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
18064 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
18065   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18066   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
18067   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
18068   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18069   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
18070   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
18071   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18072   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
18073   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
18074   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
18075   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
18076   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
18077   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
18078   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
18079   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
18080   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18081   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18082   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18083   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
18084   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18085   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
18086   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
18087   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18088   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18089   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
18090   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
18091   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
18092   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
18093   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
18094   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
18095   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
18096   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
18097   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
18098   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18099   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18100   xulrunner-1.9</p>
18101
18102
18103       </div>
18104       <div class="tags">
18105
18106
18107         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>.
18108
18109
18110       </div>
18111     </div>
18112     <div class="padding"></div>
18113
18114     <div class="entry">
18115       <div class="title">
18116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
18117       </div>
18118       <div class="date">
18119         11th June 2010
18120       </div>
18121       <div class="body">
18122         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
18123 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
18124 have been discovered and reported in the process
18125 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
18126 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
18127 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
18128 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
18129 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
18130
18131 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
18132 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
18133 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
18134 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
18135 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
18136 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
18137
18138 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
18139 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
18140 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
18141 is created.  The bug report
18142 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
18143 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
18144 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
18145 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
18146 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
18147 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
18148 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
18149 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
18150 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
18151 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
18152 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
18153 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
18154 Debian Squeeze.</p>
18155
18156 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
18157 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
18158 trick:</p>
18159
18160 <blockquote><pre>
18161 #!/bin/sh
18162 set -ex
18163
18164 if [ "$1" ] ; then
18165     desktop=$1
18166 else
18167     desktop=gnome
18168 fi
18169
18170 from=lenny
18171 to=squeeze
18172
18173 exec &lt; /dev/null
18174 unset LANG
18175 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
18176 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
18177 fuser -mv .
18178 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
18179 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
18180 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
18181 #!/bin/sh
18182 exit 101
18183 EOF
18184 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
18185 exit_cleanup() {
18186     umount $tmpdir/proc
18187 }
18188 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
18189 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
18190 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
18191
18192 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
18193
18194 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
18195 # to return the correct answers.
18196 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
18197     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
18198
18199 # Include the desktop and laptop task
18200 for test in desktop laptop ; do
18201     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
18202 #!/bin/sh
18203 exit 2
18204 EOF
18205     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
18206 done
18207
18208 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18209 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
18210 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
18211 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
18212
18213 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
18214 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
18215 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
18216 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
18217 fuser -mv
18218 </pre></blockquote>
18219
18220 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
18221 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
18222 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
18223 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
18224 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
18225 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
18226
18227 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
18228 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
18229 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
18230 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
18231 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
18232 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
18233 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
18234
18235 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
18236 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
18237 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
18238 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
18239 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
18240 packages.</p>
18241
18242       </div>
18243       <div class="tags">
18244
18245
18246         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>.
18247
18248
18249       </div>
18250     </div>
18251     <div class="padding"></div>
18252
18253     <div class="entry">
18254       <div class="title">
18255         <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>
18256       </div>
18257       <div class="date">
18258          6th June 2010
18259       </div>
18260       <div class="body">
18261         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
18262 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
18263 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
18264 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
18265 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
18266 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
18267 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
18268
18269 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
18270 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
18271 COLUMNS):</p>
18272
18273 <blockquote><pre>
18274 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
18275 previous=N
18276 PREVLEVEL=
18277 RUNLEVEL=
18278 runlevel=S
18279 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
18280 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
18281 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
18282 </pre></blockquote>
18283
18284 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
18285 script.</p>
18286
18287 <blockquote><pre>
18288 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
18289 previous=N
18290 PREVLEVEL=N
18291 RUNLEVEL=S
18292 runlevel=S
18293 </pre></blockquote>
18294
18295 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
18296 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
18297 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
18298
18299 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
18300 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
18301 choice.</p>
18302
18303       </div>
18304       <div class="tags">
18305
18306
18307         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>.
18308
18309
18310       </div>
18311     </div>
18312     <div class="padding"></div>
18313
18314     <div class="entry">
18315       <div class="title">
18316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
18317       </div>
18318       <div class="date">
18319          6th June 2010
18320       </div>
18321       <div class="body">
18322         <p>Via the
18323 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
18324 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
18325 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
18326 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
18327 following the standards wars of today.</p>
18328
18329       </div>
18330       <div class="tags">
18331
18332
18333         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>.
18334
18335
18336       </div>
18337     </div>
18338     <div class="padding"></div>
18339
18340     <div class="entry">
18341       <div class="title">
18342         <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>
18343       </div>
18344       <div class="date">
18345          3rd June 2010
18346       </div>
18347       <div class="body">
18348         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
18349 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
18350 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
18351 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
18352 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
18353
18354 <blockquote><pre>
18355 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
18356   vendor                    count
18357   Dell Computer Corporation     1
18358     PowerEdge 1750              1
18359   IBM                           1
18360     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
18361   Intel                         2
18362   [no-dmi-info]                 3
18363 maintainer:~#
18364 </pre></blockquote>
18365
18366 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
18367 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
18368 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
18369 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
18370 option to list the individual machines.</p>
18371
18372 <p>A larger list is
18373 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
18374 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
18375 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
18376 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
18377 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
18378 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
18379 collector.</p>
18380
18381       </div>
18382       <div class="tags">
18383
18384
18385         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>.
18386
18387
18388       </div>
18389     </div>
18390     <div class="padding"></div>
18391
18392     <div class="entry">
18393       <div class="title">
18394         <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>
18395       </div>
18396       <div class="date">
18397          1st June 2010
18398       </div>
18399       <div class="body">
18400         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
18401 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
18402 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
18403 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
18404 wait.</p>
18405
18406 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
18407 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
18408 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
18409 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
18410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
18411 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
18412
18413 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
18414 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
18415 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
18416 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
18417 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
18418 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
18419 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
18420 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
18421
18422 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
18423
18424       </div>
18425       <div class="tags">
18426
18427
18428         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>.
18429
18430
18431       </div>
18432     </div>
18433     <div class="padding"></div>
18434
18435     <div class="entry">
18436       <div class="title">
18437         <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>
18438       </div>
18439       <div class="date">
18440         27th May 2010
18441       </div>
18442       <div class="body">
18443         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
18444 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
18445 issues are known and should be solved:
18446
18447 <p><ul>
18448
18449 <li>The wicd package seen to
18450 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
18451 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
18452 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
18453 seem to be on the case.</li>
18454
18455 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
18456 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
18457 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
18458 maintainer is on the case.</li>
18459
18460 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
18461 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
18462 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
18463 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
18464 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
18465 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
18466 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
18467 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
18468
18469 </ul></p>
18470
18471 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
18472 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
18473 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
18474 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
18475
18476 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18477 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18478 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18479 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18480
18481 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
18482
18483       </div>
18484       <div class="tags">
18485
18486
18487         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>.
18488
18489
18490       </div>
18491     </div>
18492     <div class="padding"></div>
18493
18494     <div class="entry">
18495       <div class="title">
18496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
18497       </div>
18498       <div class="date">
18499         22nd May 2010
18500       </div>
18501       <div class="body">
18502         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
18503 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
18504 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
18505 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
18506
18507 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
18508 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
18509 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
18510 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
18511 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
18512 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
18513 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
18514 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
18515 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
18516 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
18517 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
18518 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
18519 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
18520 going to work.</p>
18521
18522 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
18523 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
18524 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
18525 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
18526 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
18527 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
18528 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
18529 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
18530 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
18531 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
18532 Edu.</p>
18533
18534 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
18535 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
18536 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
18537 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
18538 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
18539 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
18540
18541 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
18542 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
18543
18544       </div>
18545       <div class="tags">
18546
18547
18548         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>.
18549
18550
18551       </div>
18552     </div>
18553     <div class="padding"></div>
18554
18555     <div class="entry">
18556       <div class="title">
18557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
18558       </div>
18559       <div class="date">
18560         19th May 2010
18561       </div>
18562       <div class="body">
18563         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
18564 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
18565 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
18566 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
18567 into unstable.  The
18568 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
18569 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
18570 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
18571 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
18572 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
18573 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
18574 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
18575
18576 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
18577 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
18578 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
18579 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
18580 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
18581 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
18582 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
18583 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
18584
18585 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
18586 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
18587 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
18588 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
18589 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
18590 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
18591 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
18592
18593 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
18594 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
18595 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
18596 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
18597 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
18598 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
18599 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
18600 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
18601 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
18602 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
18603 on the home directory servers.</p>
18604
18605 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
18606 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
18607 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
18608 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
18609 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
18610 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
18611
18612 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18614
18615       </div>
18616       <div class="tags">
18617
18618
18619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18620
18621
18622       </div>
18623     </div>
18624     <div class="padding"></div>
18625
18626     <div class="entry">
18627       <div class="title">
18628         <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>
18629       </div>
18630       <div class="date">
18631         14th May 2010
18632       </div>
18633       <div class="body">
18634         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
18635 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
18636 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
18637 expected, if I am to believe the
18638 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
18639 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
18640 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
18641 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
18642 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
18643 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
18644 version.</p>
18645
18646 More information about
18647 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18648 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
18649 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
18650 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
18651
18652 <blockquote><pre>
18653 CONCURRENCY=none
18654 </pre></blockquote>
18655
18656 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18657 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18658 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18659 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18660
18661       </div>
18662       <div class="tags">
18663
18664
18665         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>.
18666
18667
18668       </div>
18669     </div>
18670     <div class="padding"></div>
18671
18672     <div class="entry">
18673       <div class="title">
18674         <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>
18675       </div>
18676       <div class="date">
18677         14th May 2010
18678       </div>
18679       <div class="body">
18680         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
18681 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
18682 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
18683 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
18684 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
18685 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
18686 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
18687 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
18688
18689 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
18690 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
18691 this on the collector host:</p>
18692
18693 <blockquote><pre>
18694 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
18695 </pre></blockquote>
18696
18697 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
18698 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
18699
18700 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
18701 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
18702 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
18703 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
18704 written yet.</p>
18705
18706       </div>
18707       <div class="tags">
18708
18709
18710         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>.
18711
18712
18713       </div>
18714     </div>
18715     <div class="padding"></div>
18716
18717     <div class="entry">
18718       <div class="title">
18719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
18720       </div>
18721       <div class="date">
18722         13th May 2010
18723       </div>
18724       <div class="body">
18725         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
18726 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
18727 has been
18728 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
18729
18730 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
18731 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
18732 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
18733 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
18734 based boot system.  Tollef is
18735 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
18736 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
18737 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
18738 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
18739 at the moment do not.</p>
18740
18741 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
18742 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
18743 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
18744 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
18745 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
18746 way forward.</p>
18747
18748 <p>In the mean time, based on the
18749 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
18750 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
18751 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
18752 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
18753 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
18754 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
18755 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
18756 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
18757
18758       </div>
18759       <div class="tags">
18760
18761
18762         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>.
18763
18764
18765       </div>
18766     </div>
18767     <div class="padding"></div>
18768
18769     <div class="entry">
18770       <div class="title">
18771         <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>
18772       </div>
18773       <div class="date">
18774          6th May 2010
18775       </div>
18776       <div class="body">
18777         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
18778 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
18779 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
18780 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
18781 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18782 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
18783 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
18784
18785 <blockquote><pre>
18786 CONCURRENCY=makefile
18787 </pre></blockquote>
18788
18789 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
18790 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
18791 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
18792 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
18793 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
18794 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
18795 make this happen.</p>
18796
18797 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
18798 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
18799 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
18800 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
18801 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
18802
18803 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
18804 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
18805 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
18806 fix the remaining issues.</p>
18807
18808 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18809 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18810 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18811 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18812
18813       </div>
18814       <div class="tags">
18815
18816
18817         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>.
18818
18819
18820       </div>
18821     </div>
18822     <div class="padding"></div>
18823
18824     <div class="entry">
18825       <div class="title">
18826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
18827       </div>
18828       <div class="date">
18829          2nd May 2010
18830       </div>
18831       <div class="body">
18832         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
18833 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
18834 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
18835
18836 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
18837 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
18838 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
18839 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
18840 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
18841
18842 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
18843 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
18844
18845 <blockquote><pre>
18846 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18847 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
18848 Password expires                                        : never
18849 Password inactive                                       : never
18850 Account expires                                         : never
18851 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18852 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
18853 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18854 root@tjener:~#
18855 </pre></blockquote>
18856
18857 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
18858 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
18859 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
18860 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
18861 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
18862 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
18863
18864 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
18865 intended:</p>
18866
18867 <blockquote><pre>
18868 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
18869 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18870 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
18871 Password expires                                        : never
18872 Password inactive                                       : never
18873 Account expires                                         : never
18874 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18875 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
18876 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18877 root@tjener:~#
18878 </pre></blockquote>
18879
18880 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
18881 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
18882 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
18883
18884 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
18885 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
18886
18887 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
18888 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18889
18890 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
18891 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
18892 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
18893 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
18894 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
18895 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
18896 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
18897
18898 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
18899 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
18900 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
18901 change.</p>
18902
18903       </div>
18904       <div class="tags">
18905
18906
18907         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
18908
18909
18910       </div>
18911     </div>
18912     <div class="padding"></div>
18913
18914     <div class="entry">
18915       <div class="title">
18916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
18917       </div>
18918       <div class="date">
18919         28th April 2010
18920       </div>
18921       <div class="body">
18922         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
18923 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
18924 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
18925 and go.</p>
18926
18927 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
18928 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
18929 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
18930 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
18931
18932 <ul>
18933
18934  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
18935    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
18936    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
18937    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
18938    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
18939    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
18940    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
18941    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
18942    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
18943    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
18944    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
18945    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
18946
18947  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
18948    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
18949    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
18950    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
18951    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
18952    or the Fedora developed
18953    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
18954    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
18955
18956  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
18957    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
18958    directory, using unison.</li>
18959
18960  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
18961    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
18962    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
18963    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
18964    implemented.</li>
18965
18966  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
18967    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
18968
18969  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
18970    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
18971    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
18972
18973 </ul>
18974
18975 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
18976 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
18977 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
18978 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
18979 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
18980 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
18981 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
18982 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
18983 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
18984
18985 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18986 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18987
18988       </div>
18989       <div class="tags">
18990
18991
18992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18993
18994
18995       </div>
18996     </div>
18997     <div class="padding"></div>
18998
18999     <div class="entry">
19000       <div class="title">
19001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
19002       </div>
19003       <div class="date">
19004         19th April 2010
19005       </div>
19006       <div class="body">
19007         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
19008 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
19009 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
19010 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
19011 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
19012 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
19013 restrictions on the web, for example from
19014 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
19015 epub-version from
19016 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
19017 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
19018 strongly recommend this book.</p>
19019
19020       </div>
19021       <div class="tags">
19022
19023
19024         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19025
19026
19027       </div>
19028     </div>
19029     <div class="padding"></div>
19030
19031     <div class="entry">
19032       <div class="title">
19033         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
19034       </div>
19035       <div class="date">
19036         14th April 2010
19037       </div>
19038       <div class="body">
19039         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
19040 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
19041 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
19042 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
19043 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
19044 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
19045 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
19046 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
19047 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
19048
19049 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
19050 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
19051 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
19052 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
19053 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
19054
19055 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
19056 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
19057
19058 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
19059 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
19060 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
19061 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
19062 to work properly.</p>
19063
19064 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
19065 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
19066 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
19067 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
19068 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
19069 time.</p>
19070
19071 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
19072 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
19073 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
19074 up in a few days.</p>
19075
19076       </div>
19077       <div class="tags">
19078
19079
19080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19081
19082
19083       </div>
19084     </div>
19085     <div class="padding"></div>
19086
19087     <div class="entry">
19088       <div class="title">
19089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
19090       </div>
19091       <div class="date">
19092          6th March 2010
19093       </div>
19094       <div class="body">
19095         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
19096 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
19097 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
19098 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
19099 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
19100 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
19101
19102 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
19103 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
19104 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
19105 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
19106
19107 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
19108 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
19109 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
19110 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
19111 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
19112 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
19113
19114       </div>
19115       <div class="tags">
19116
19117
19118         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19119
19120
19121       </div>
19122     </div>
19123     <div class="padding"></div>
19124
19125     <div class="entry">
19126       <div class="title">
19127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
19128       </div>
19129       <div class="date">
19130         11th February 2010
19131       </div>
19132       <div class="body">
19133         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
19134 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
19135 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
19136 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
19137 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
19138 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
19139 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
19140
19141 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
19142
19143 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
19144 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
19145 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
19146 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
19147
19148       </div>
19149       <div class="tags">
19150
19151
19152         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19153
19154
19155       </div>
19156     </div>
19157     <div class="padding"></div>
19158
19159     <div class="entry">
19160       <div class="title">
19161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
19162       </div>
19163       <div class="date">
19164         27th January 2010
19165       </div>
19166       <div class="body">
19167         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
19168 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
19169 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
19170 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
19171 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
19172 further.</p>
19173
19174 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
19175 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
19176 configured to be a server for the
19177 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
19178 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
19179 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
19180 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
19181 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
19182 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
19183 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
19184 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
19185 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
19186 and Nagios configuration.</p>
19187
19188 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
19189 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
19190 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
19191 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
19192
19193 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
19194 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
19195 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
19196 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
19197 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
19198 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
19199 the machine.</p>
19200
19201 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
19202 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
19203 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
19204 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
19205
19206 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
19207 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
19208 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
19209 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
19210 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
19211 everything is taken care of.</p>
19212
19213       </div>
19214       <div class="tags">
19215
19216
19217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
19218
19219
19220       </div>
19221     </div>
19222     <div class="padding"></div>
19223
19224     <div class="entry">
19225       <div class="title">
19226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
19227       </div>
19228       <div class="date">
19229         12th August 2009
19230       </div>
19231       <div class="body">
19232         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
19233 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
19234 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
19235 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
19236
19237 <table>
19238 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19239 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
19240 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
19241 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
19242 </table>
19243
19244 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
19245 got these numbers:</p>
19246
19247 <table>
19248 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19249 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
19250 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
19251 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
19252 </table>
19253
19254 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
19255
19256 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
19257 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
19258 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
19259 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
19260 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
19261
19262
19263 <table>
19264 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19265 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
19266 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
19267 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
19268 </table>
19269
19270 <p>And with 'site:no':
19271
19272 <table>
19273 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19274 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
19275 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
19276 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
19277 </table>
19278
19279 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
19280 numbers.</p>
19281
19282       </div>
19283       <div class="tags">
19284
19285
19286         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19287
19288
19289       </div>
19290     </div>
19291     <div class="padding"></div>
19292
19293     <div class="entry">
19294       <div class="title">
19295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
19296       </div>
19297       <div class="date">
19298          8th August 2009
19299       </div>
19300       <div class="body">
19301         <p>According to <a
19302 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
19303 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
19304 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
19305 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
19306 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
19307 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
19308 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
19309 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
19310 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
19311 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
19312
19313 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
19314 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
19315 seminar this autumn.</p>
19316
19317       </div>
19318       <div class="tags">
19319
19320
19321         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
19322
19323
19324       </div>
19325     </div>
19326     <div class="padding"></div>
19327
19328     <div class="entry">
19329       <div class="title">
19330         <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>
19331       </div>
19332       <div class="date">
19333         27th July 2009
19334       </div>
19335       <div class="body">
19336         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
19337 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
19338 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
19339 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
19340 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
19341 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
19342 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
19343
19344 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
19345 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
19346 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
19347
19348       </div>
19349       <div class="tags">
19350
19351
19352         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>.
19353
19354
19355       </div>
19356     </div>
19357     <div class="padding"></div>
19358
19359     <div class="entry">
19360       <div class="title">
19361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
19362       </div>
19363       <div class="date">
19364         22nd July 2009
19365       </div>
19366       <div class="body">
19367         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
19368 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
19369 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
19370 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
19371 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
19372 the package up to date.</p>
19373
19374 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
19375 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
19376 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
19377 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
19378 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
19379 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
19380 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
19381 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
19382 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
19383 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
19384 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
19385 working on the future release.</p>
19386
19387 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
19388 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
19389
19390       </div>
19391       <div class="tags">
19392
19393
19394         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>.
19395
19396
19397       </div>
19398     </div>
19399     <div class="padding"></div>
19400
19401     <div class="entry">
19402       <div class="title">
19403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
19404       </div>
19405       <div class="date">
19406         24th June 2009
19407       </div>
19408       <div class="body">
19409         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
19410 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
19411 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
19412 funded
19413 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
19414 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
19415 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
19416 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
19417 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
19418 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
19419
19420 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
19421 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
19422 boot:</p>
19423
19424 <ul>
19425
19426 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
19427
19428 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
19429    clock is in UTC.</li>
19430
19431 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
19432    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19433    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
19434
19435 </ul>
19436
19437 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
19438 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
19439 Villegas</a>.
19440
19441 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
19442 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
19443 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
19444 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
19445 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
19446 using this.</p>
19447
19448 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
19449 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
19450 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
19451 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
19452 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
19453 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
19454 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
19455
19456       </div>
19457       <div class="tags">
19458
19459
19460         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>.
19461
19462
19463       </div>
19464     </div>
19465     <div class="padding"></div>
19466
19467     <div class="entry">
19468       <div class="title">
19469         <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>
19470       </div>
19471       <div class="date">
19472          2nd May 2009
19473       </div>
19474       <div class="body">
19475         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
19476 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
19477 do not yet know them.</p>
19478
19479 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
19480 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
19481 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
19482 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
19483 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
19484 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
19485 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
19486 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
19487 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
19488 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
19489 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
19490
19491 <p>The second one is
19492 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
19493 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
19494 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
19495 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
19496 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
19497 and the company behind it is running
19498 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
19499 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
19500 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
19501 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
19502 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
19503 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
19504 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
19505 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
19506
19507 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
19508 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
19509 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
19510 surrounded by today.</p>
19511
19512       </div>
19513       <div class="tags">
19514
19515
19516         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>.
19517
19518
19519       </div>
19520     </div>
19521     <div class="padding"></div>
19522
19523     <div class="entry">
19524       <div class="title">
19525         <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>
19526       </div>
19527       <div class="date">
19528         28th April 2009
19529       </div>
19530       <div class="body">
19531         <p>Julien Blache
19532 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
19533 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
19534 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
19535 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
19536 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
19537 properties.</p>
19538
19539       </div>
19540       <div class="tags">
19541
19542
19543         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>.
19544
19545
19546       </div>
19547     </div>
19548     <div class="padding"></div>
19549
19550     <div class="entry">
19551       <div class="title">
19552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
19553       </div>
19554       <div class="date">
19555          5th April 2009
19556       </div>
19557       <div class="body">
19558         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
19559 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
19560 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
19561 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
19562 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
19563 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
19564 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
19565 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
19566
19567 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
19568 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
19569 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
19570   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
19571   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
19572
19573 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
19574 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
19575 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
19576 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
19577
19578 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
19579 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
19580 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
19581 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
19582
19583 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
19584 set -e
19585 URL="$1"
19586 SAVEFILE="$2"
19587 DURATION="$3"
19588 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
19589   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
19590   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
19591 pid=$!
19592 sleep $DURATION
19593 kill $pid
19594 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
19595
19596       </div>
19597       <div class="tags">
19598
19599
19600         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
19601
19602
19603       </div>
19604     </div>
19605     <div class="padding"></div>
19606
19607     <div class="entry">
19608       <div class="title">
19609         <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>
19610       </div>
19611       <div class="date">
19612         30th March 2009
19613       </div>
19614       <div class="body">
19615         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
19616 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
19617 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
19618 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
19619 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
19620 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
19621 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
19622 application.</p>
19623
19624 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
19625 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
19626 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
19627 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
19628 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
19629 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
19630 blocked from doing so.</p>
19631
19632 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
19633 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
19634 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
19635 requirements change.</p>
19636
19637 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
19638 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
19639 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
19640
19641       </div>
19642       <div class="tags">
19643
19644
19645         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>.
19646
19647
19648       </div>
19649     </div>
19650     <div class="padding"></div>
19651
19652     <div class="entry">
19653       <div class="title">
19654         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
19655       </div>
19656       <div class="date">
19657         29th March 2009
19658       </div>
19659       <div class="body">
19660         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
19661 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
19662 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
19663 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
19664 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
19665 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
19666 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
19667 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
19668 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
19669 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
19670 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
19671 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
19672 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
19673 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
19674 now. :)</p>
19675
19676       </div>
19677       <div class="tags">
19678
19679
19680         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>.
19681
19682
19683       </div>
19684     </div>
19685     <div class="padding"></div>
19686
19687     <div class="entry">
19688       <div class="title">
19689         <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>
19690       </div>
19691       <div class="date">
19692         29th March 2009
19693       </div>
19694       <div class="body">
19695         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
19696 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
19697 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
19698 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
19699 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
19700 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
19701
19702 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
19703 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
19704 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
19705 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
19706 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
19707 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
19708 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
19709 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
19710 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
19711 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
19712 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
19713 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
19714 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
19715
19716 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
19717 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
19718 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
19719 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
19720
19721 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
19722 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
19723
19724 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
19725 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
19726 new IETF work group?</p>
19727
19728       </div>
19729       <div class="tags">
19730
19731
19732         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>.
19733
19734
19735       </div>
19736     </div>
19737     <div class="padding"></div>
19738
19739     <div class="entry">
19740       <div class="title">
19741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
19742       </div>
19743       <div class="date">
19744         28th February 2009
19745       </div>
19746       <div class="body">
19747         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
19748 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
19749 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
19750 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
19751 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
19752 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
19753 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
19754 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
19755 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
19756 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
19757 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
19758 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
19759 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
19760 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
19761 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
19762 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
19763 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
19764 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
19765 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
19766 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
19767 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
19768 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
19769 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
19770 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
19771 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
19772 machine.</p>
19773
19774 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
19775 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
19776 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
19777 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
19778 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
19779 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
19780 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
19781
19782 <pre>
19783 use LWP::Simple;
19784 use POSIX;
19785 use WWW::Mechanize;
19786 use Date::Parse;
19787 [...]
19788 sub get_support_info {
19789     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
19790     my $str;
19791
19792     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
19793         # fetch website from Dell support
19794         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
19795         my $webpage = get($url);
19796         return undef unless ($webpage);
19797
19798         my $daysleft = -1;
19799         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
19800         foreach my $line (@lines) {
19801             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
19802             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19803             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
19804
19805             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
19806             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
19807             my $lastend = "";
19808             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
19809                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
19810
19811                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19812                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19813                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19814                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
19815                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
19816                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
19817                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
19818             }
19819             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19820             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19821                 if ($lastend lt $today);
19822         }
19823     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
19824         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
19825         my $url =
19826             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
19827         $mech->get($url);
19828         my $fields = {
19829             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
19830             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
19831             'country' => 'NO',
19832             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
19833             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
19834         };
19835         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
19836                             fields      => $fields );
19837         # Next step is screen scraping
19838         my $content = $mech->content();
19839
19840         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19841         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19842         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19843         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19844
19845         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19846
19847         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
19848             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
19849                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
19850             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
19851             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19852                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19853             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19854                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
19855
19856             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
19857
19858             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19859                 if ($end lt $today);
19860         }
19861     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
19862         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
19863         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
19864         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
19865             my $content =
19866                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
19867             if ($content) {
19868                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19869                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19870                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19871                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19872
19873                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
19874                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
19875
19876                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
19877
19878                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19879                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19880                     if ($end lt $today);
19881             }
19882         }
19883     }
19884     return $str;
19885 }
19886 </pre>
19887
19888 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
19889 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
19890 from dmidecode.</p>
19891
19892 <pre>
19893 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
19894                        "447707-B21");
19895 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
19896 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
19897                        "1234567");
19898 </pre>
19899
19900 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
19901 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
19902
19903 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
19904 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
19905 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
19906 do so.</p>
19907
19908       </div>
19909       <div class="tags">
19910
19911
19912         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19913
19914
19915       </div>
19916     </div>
19917     <div class="padding"></div>
19918
19919     <div class="entry">
19920       <div class="title">
19921         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
19922       </div>
19923       <div class="date">
19924         20th February 2009
19925       </div>
19926       <div class="body">
19927         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
19928 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
19929 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
19930 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
19931 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
19932 the "missing" computer.</p>
19933
19934 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
19935 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
19936 code blocks as defined in the
19937 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
19938 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
19939 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
19940 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
19941 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
19942 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
19943 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
19944 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
19945 codes.</p>
19946
19947 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
19948 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
19949 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
19950 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
19951 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
19952 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
19953
19954 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
19955 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
19956 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
19957 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
19958 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
19959 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
19960 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
19961 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
19962 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
19963 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
19964
19965 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
19966 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
19967 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
19968
19969       </div>
19970       <div class="tags">
19971
19972
19973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19974
19975
19976       </div>
19977     </div>
19978     <div class="padding"></div>
19979
19980     <div class="entry">
19981       <div class="title">
19982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
19983       </div>
19984       <div class="date">
19985         17th January 2009
19986       </div>
19987       <div class="body">
19988         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
19989 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
19990 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
19991 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
19992 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
19993 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
19994 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
19995 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
19996 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
19997 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
19998 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
19999 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
20000 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
20001 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
20002
20003 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
20004 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
20005 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
20006 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
20007 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
20008 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
20009 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
20010 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
20011 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
20012 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
20013 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
20014 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
20015 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
20016 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
20017 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
20018 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
20019 playing when the download is done.</p>
20020
20021 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
20022 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
20023 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
20024 too.</p>
20025
20026 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
20027 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
20028 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
20029 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
20030
20031       </div>
20032       <div class="tags">
20033
20034
20035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20036
20037
20038       </div>
20039     </div>
20040     <div class="padding"></div>
20041
20042     <div class="entry">
20043       <div class="title">
20044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
20045       </div>
20046       <div class="date">
20047         28th December 2008
20048       </div>
20049       <div class="body">
20050         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
20051 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
20052 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
20053 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
20054 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
20055 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
20056 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
20057 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
20058 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
20059 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
20060 source, sink and mixer applications and
20061 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
20062 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
20063 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
20064 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
20065 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
20066 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
20067 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
20068 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
20069 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
20070
20071 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
20072 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
20073 larger stick as well.</p>
20074
20075       </div>
20076       <div class="tags">
20077
20078
20079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20080
20081
20082       </div>
20083     </div>
20084     <div class="padding"></div>
20085
20086     <div class="entry">
20087       <div class="title">
20088         <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>
20089       </div>
20090       <div class="date">
20091          7th December 2008
20092       </div>
20093       <div class="body">
20094         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
20095 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
20096 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
20097 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
20098 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
20099 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
20100 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
20101 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
20102
20103 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
20104 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
20105 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
20106 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
20107 of these cards.</p>
20108
20109       </div>
20110       <div class="tags">
20111
20112
20113         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>.
20114
20115
20116       </div>
20117     </div>
20118     <div class="padding"></div>
20119
20120     <div class="entry">
20121       <div class="title">
20122         <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>
20123       </div>
20124       <div class="date">
20125         25th November 2008
20126       </div>
20127       <div class="body">
20128         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
20129 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
20130 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
20131 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
20132 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
20133 notes are available on
20134 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
20135 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
20136 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
20137 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
20138 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
20139 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
20140 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
20141 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
20142 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
20143
20144 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
20145 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
20146
20147       </div>
20148       <div class="tags">
20149
20150
20151         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>.
20152
20153
20154       </div>
20155     </div>
20156     <div class="padding"></div>
20157
20158     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
20159     <div id="sidebar">
20160
20161
20162
20163 <h2>Archive</h2>
20164 <ul>
20165
20166 <li>2014
20167 <ul>
20168
20169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
20170
20171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
20172
20173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
20174
20175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
20176
20177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
20178
20179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
20180
20181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (1)</a></li>
20182
20183 </ul></li>
20184
20185 <li>2013
20186 <ul>
20187
20188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
20189
20190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
20191
20192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
20193
20194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
20195
20196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20197
20198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
20199
20200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
20201
20202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
20203
20204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
20205
20206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
20207
20208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
20209
20210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
20211
20212 </ul></li>
20213
20214 <li>2012
20215 <ul>
20216
20217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
20218
20219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
20220
20221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
20222
20223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
20224
20225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
20226
20227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
20228
20229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
20230
20231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
20232
20233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
20234
20235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
20236
20237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
20238
20239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
20240
20241 </ul></li>
20242
20243 <li>2011
20244 <ul>
20245
20246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
20247
20248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
20249
20250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
20251
20252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
20253
20254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
20255
20256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
20257
20258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
20259
20260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
20261
20262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
20263
20264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
20265
20266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
20267
20268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
20269
20270 </ul></li>
20271
20272 <li>2010
20273 <ul>
20274
20275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
20276
20277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
20278
20279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
20280
20281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
20282
20283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20284
20285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
20286
20287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
20288
20289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
20290
20291 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
20292
20293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
20294
20295 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
20296
20297 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
20298
20299 </ul></li>
20300
20301 <li>2009
20302 <ul>
20303
20304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
20305
20306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
20307
20308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
20309
20310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
20311
20312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20313
20314 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
20315
20316 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
20317
20318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
20319
20320 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
20321
20322 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
20323
20324 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
20325
20326 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
20327
20328 </ul></li>
20329
20330 <li>2008
20331 <ul>
20332
20333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
20334
20335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
20336
20337 </ul></li>
20338
20339 </ul>
20340
20341
20342
20343 <h2>Tags</h2>
20344 <ul>
20345
20346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
20347
20348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
20349
20350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
20351
20352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
20353
20354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
20355
20356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
20357
20358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
20359
20360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
20361
20362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (99)</a></li>
20363
20364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (147)</a></li>
20365
20366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
20367
20368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
20369
20370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
20371
20372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
20373
20374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (249)</a></li>
20375
20376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
20377
20378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
20379
20380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (13)</a></li>
20381
20382  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (8)</a></li>
20383
20384  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
20385
20386  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (40)</a></li>
20387
20388  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (9)</a></li>
20389
20390  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
20391
20392  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
20393
20394  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
20395
20396  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
20397
20398  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
20399
20400  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (28)</a></li>
20401
20402  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (246)</a></li>
20403
20404  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
20405
20406  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
20407
20408  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
20409
20410  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (46)</a></li>
20411
20412  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (72)</a></li>
20413
20414  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
20415
20416  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
20417
20418  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
20419
20420  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
20421
20422  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
20423
20424  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
20425
20426  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
20427
20428  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
20429
20430  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (40)</a></li>
20431
20432  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
20433
20434  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
20435
20436  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
20437
20438  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
20439
20440  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
20441
20442  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (25)</a></li>
20443
20444  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
20445
20446  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
20447
20448  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (42)</a></li>
20449
20450  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
20451
20452  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (32)</a></li>
20453
20454 </ul>
20455
20456
20457     </div>
20458     <p style="text-align: right">
20459  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
20460 </p>
20461
20462   </body>
20463 </html>