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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/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         30th November 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
  32 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
  33 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
  34 experiment with interesting network technology, the
  35 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
  36 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
  37 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
  38 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
  39 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
  40 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
  41 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
  42 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
  43 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
  44 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
  45 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
  46 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
  47 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
  48 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
  49 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
  50 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
  51
  52       </div>
  53       <div class="tags">
  54
  55
  56         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>.
  57
  58
  59       </div>
  60     </div>
  61     <div class="padding"></div>
  62
  63     <div class="entry">
  64       <div class="title">
  65         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
  66       </div>
  67       <div class="date">
  68         24th November 2013
  69       </div>
  70       <div class="body">
  71         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
  72 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
  73 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
  74 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
  75 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
  76 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
  77 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
  78 is working on.  I checked the
  79 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
  80 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
  81 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
  82 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
  83 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
  84 These are the release notes:</p>
  85
  86 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
  87
  88 <ul>
  89
  90   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
  91    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
  92    up.</li>
  93
  94   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
  95
  96   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
  97    Matthias Klose.</li>
  98
  99   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
 100    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
 101
 102   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
 103    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
 104    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
 105
 106 </ul>
 107
 108 <p>You can
 109 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
 110 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
 111 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
 112 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
 113 include a testsuite check.</p>
 114
 115       </div>
 116       <div class="tags">
 117
 118
 119         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>.
 120
 121
 122       </div>
 123     </div>
 124     <div class="padding"></div>
 125
 126     <div class="entry">
 127       <div class="title">
 128         <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>
 129       </div>
 130       <div class="date">
 131         21st November 2013
 132       </div>
 133       <div class="body">
 134         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
 135 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
 136 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
 137 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
 138 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
 139 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
 140 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
 141 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
 142 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
 143 TED talk
 144 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
 145 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
 146 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
 147
 148 <blockquote>
 149
 150 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
 151 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
 152 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
 153 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
 154 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
 155 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
 156 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
 157 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
 158 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
 159 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
 160 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
 161
 162 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
 163 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
 164 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
 165
 166 </blockquote>
 167
 168 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
 169 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
 170 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
 171 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
 172 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
 173 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
 174 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
 175 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
 176 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
 177
 178       </div>
 179       <div class="tags">
 180
 181
 182         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>.
 183
 184
 185       </div>
 186     </div>
 187     <div class="padding"></div>
 188
 189     <div class="entry">
 190       <div class="title">
 191         <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>
 192       </div>
 193       <div class="date">
 194         13th November 2013
 195       </div>
 196       <div class="body">
 197         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
 198 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
 199 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
 200 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
 201 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
 202 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
 203 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
 204 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
 205 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
 206 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
 207 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
 208 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 209 right away. :)</p>
 210
 211       </div>
 212       <div class="tags">
 213
 214
 215         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>.
 216
 217
 218       </div>
 219     </div>
 220     <div class="padding"></div>
 221
 222     <div class="entry">
 223       <div class="title">
 224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
 225       </div>
 226       <div class="date">
 227         10th November 2013
 228       </div>
 229       <div class="body">
 230         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
 231 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
 232 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
 233 MR3040 as a mesh node using
 234 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
 235
 236 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
 237 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
 238 and downloaded
 239 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
 240 recommended firmware image</a>
 241 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
 242 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
 243 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
 244 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
 245 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
 246
 247 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
 248 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
 249 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
 250 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
 251 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
 252 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
 253 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
 254 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
 255 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
 256 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
 257 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
 258 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
 259 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
 260
 261 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
 262 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
 263 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
 264 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
 265 them:</p>
 266
 267 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
 268
 269 <pre>
 270
 271 config interface 'loopback'
 272         option ifname 'lo'
 273         option proto 'static'
 274         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
 275         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
 276
 277 config globals 'globals'
 278         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
 279
 280 config interface 'lan'
 281         option ifname 'eth0'
 282         option type 'bridge'
 283         option proto 'dhcp'
 284         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
 285         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
 286         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
 287         option ip6assign '60'
 288
 289 config interface 'mesh'
 290         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 291         option mtu '1528'
 292         option proto 'batadv'
 293         option mesh 'bat0'
 294 </pre>
 295
 296 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
 297 <pre>
 298
 299 config wifi-device 'radio0'
 300         option type 'mac80211'
 301         option channel '11'
 302         option hwmode '11ng'
 303         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
 304         option htmode 'HT20'
 305         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
 306         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
 307         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
 308         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
 309         option disabled '0'
 310
 311 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
 312         option device 'radio0'
 313         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 314         option network 'mesh'
 315         option encryption 'none'
 316         option mode 'adhoc'
 317         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
 318         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
 319 </pre>
 320 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
 321 <pre>
 322
 323 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
 324         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
 325         option 'aggregated_ogms'
 326         option 'ap_isolation'
 327         option 'bonding'
 328         option 'fragmentation'
 329         option 'gw_bandwidth'
 330         option 'gw_mode'
 331         option 'gw_sel_class'
 332         option 'log_level'
 333         option 'orig_interval'
 334         option 'vis_mode'
 335         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
 336         option 'distributed_arp_table'
 337         option 'network_coding'
 338         option 'hop_penalty'
 339
 340 # yet another batX instance
 341 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
 342 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
 343 </pre>
 344
 345 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
 346 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
 347 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
 348
 349       </div>
 350       <div class="tags">
 351
 352
 353         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>.
 354
 355
 356       </div>
 357     </div>
 358     <div class="padding"></div>
 359
 360     <div class="entry">
 361       <div class="title">
 362         <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>
 363       </div>
 364       <div class="date">
 365          2nd November 2013
 366       </div>
 367       <div class="body">
 368         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
 369 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
 370 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
 371 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
 372 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
 373
 374 <p><pre>
 375 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
 376 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
 377 # Provides:          rsyslog
 378 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
 379 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
 380 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
 381 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
 382 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
 383 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
 384 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
 385 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
 386 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
 387 ### END INIT INFO
 388 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
 389 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
 390 </pre></p>
 391
 392 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
 393 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
 394 info/comments.</p>
 395
 396 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
 397 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
 398
 399 <p><pre>
 400 #!/bin/sh
 401
 402 # Define LSB log_* functions.
 403 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
 404 # and status_of_proc is working.
 405 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
 406
 407 #
 408 # Function that starts the daemon/service
 409
 410 #
 411 do_start()
 412 {
 413         # Return
 414         #   0 if daemon has been started
 415         #   1 if daemon was already running
 416         #   2 if daemon could not be started
 417         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
 418                 || return 1
 419         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
 420                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
 421                 || return 2
 422         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
 423         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
 424         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
 425 }
 426
 427 #
 428 # Function that stops the daemon/service
 429 #
 430 do_stop()
 431 {
 432         # Return
 433         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
 434         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
 435         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
 436         #   other if a failure occurred
 437         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 438         RETVAL="$?"
 439         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
 440         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
 441         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
 442         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
 443         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
 444         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
 445         # sleep for some time.
 446         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
 447         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
 448         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
 449         rm -f $PIDFILE
 450         return "$RETVAL"
 451 }
 452
 453 #
 454 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
 455 #
 456 do_reload() {
 457         #
 458         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
 459         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
 460         # then implement that here.
 461         #
 462         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 463         return 0
 464 }
 465
 466 SCRIPTNAME=$1
 467 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
 468 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
 469 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
 470     script="$1"
 471     shift
 472     . $script
 473 else
 474     exit 0
 475 fi
 476
 477 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
 478 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
 479
 480 # Exit if the package is not installed
 481 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
 482
 483 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
 484 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
 485
 486 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
 487 . /lib/init/vars.sh
 488
 489 case "$1" in
 490   start)
 491         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
 492         do_start
 493         case "$?" in
 494                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 495                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 496         esac
 497         ;;
 498   stop)
 499         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
 500         do_stop
 501         case "$?" in
 502                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 503                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 504         esac
 505         ;;
 506   status)
 507         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
 508         ;;
 509   #reload|force-reload)
 510         #
 511         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
 512         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
 513         #
 514         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
 515         #do_reload
 516         #log_end_msg $?
 517         #;;
 518   restart|force-reload)
 519         #
 520         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
 521         # 'force-reload' alias
 522         #
 523         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
 524         do_stop
 525         case "$?" in
 526           0|1)
 527                 do_start
 528                 case "$?" in
 529                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
 530                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
 531                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
 532                 esac
 533                 ;;
 534           *)
 535                 # Failed to stop
 536                 log_end_msg 1
 537                 ;;
 538         esac
 539         ;;
 540   *)
 541         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
 542         exit 3
 543         ;;
 544 esac
 545
 546 :
 547 </pre></p>
 548
 549 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
 550 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
 551 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
 552 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
 553
 554 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
 555 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
 556 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
 557 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
 558 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
 559
 560       </div>
 561       <div class="tags">
 562
 563
 564         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>.
 565
 566
 567       </div>
 568     </div>
 569     <div class="padding"></div>
 570
 571     <div class="entry">
 572       <div class="title">
 573         <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>
 574       </div>
 575       <div class="date">
 576          1st November 2013
 577       </div>
 578       <div class="body">
 579         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
 580 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
 581 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
 582 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
 583 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
 584 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
 585 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
 586 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
 587 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
 588 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
 589 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
 590 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
 591
 592 <p>The source is now available from
 593 <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>
 594
 595       </div>
 596       <div class="tags">
 597
 598
 599         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>.
 600
 601
 602       </div>
 603     </div>
 604     <div class="padding"></div>
 605
 606     <div class="entry">
 607       <div class="title">
 608         <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>
 609       </div>
 610       <div class="date">
 611         27th October 2013
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="body">
 614         <p>The
 615 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
 616 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
 617 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
 618 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
 619 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
 620 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
 621 of a plan to simplify the build system for
 622 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
 623 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
 624 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
 625 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
 626 Raspberry Pi.</p>
 627
 628 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
 629 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
 630 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
 631 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
 632 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
 633 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
 634 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
 635 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
 636 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
 637 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
 638 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
 639 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
 640 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
 641 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
 642 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
 643 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
 644 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
 645 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
 646 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
 647 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
 648 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
 649 available from
 650 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
 651 upstream project page</a>.</p>
 652
 653 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
 654 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
 655 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
 656 list:</p>
 657
 658 <p><pre>
 659 #!/bin/sh
 660 set -e # Exit on first error
 661 rootdir="$1"
 662 cd "$rootdir"
 663 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
 664 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 665 EOF
 666 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
 667 # install a kernel somewhere too.
 668 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
 669     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 670 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 671 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
 672 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
 673 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
 674 </pre></p>
 675
 676 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
 677 to build the image:</p>
 678
 679 <pre>
 680 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
 681     --variant minbase \
 682     --arch armel \
 683     --distribution jessie \
 684     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 685     --image test.img \
 686     --size 600M \
 687     --bootsize 64M \
 688     --boottype vfat \
 689     --log-level debug \
 690     --verbose \
 691     --no-kernel \
 692     --no-extlinux \
 693     --root-password raspberry \
 694     --hostname raspberrypi \
 695     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 696     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 697     --package netbase \
 698     --package git-core \
 699     --package binutils \
 700     --package ca-certificates \
 701     --package wget \
 702     --package kmod
 703 </pre></p>
 704
 705 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 706 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 707 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 708 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 709 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 710 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 711 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 712
 713 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 714 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 715 build dependency list.</p>
 716
 717 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 718 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 719 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 720 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 721
 722       </div>
 723       <div class="tags">
 724
 725
 726         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>.
 727
 728
 729       </div>
 730     </div>
 731     <div class="padding"></div>
 732
 733     <div class="entry">
 734       <div class="title">
 735         <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>
 736       </div>
 737       <div class="date">
 738         21st October 2013
 739       </div>
 740       <div class="body">
 741         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
 742 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
 743 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
 744 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
 745 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
 746 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
 747 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
 748 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
 749
 750 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
 751 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
 752 instead, I started playing with a
 753 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
 754 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
 755 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
 756 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
 757 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
 758 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
 759 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
 760 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
 761 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
 762 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
 763 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
 764 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
 765 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
 766 every client on the local network.</p>
 767
 768 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
 769 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
 770 and a script
 771 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
 772 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
 773 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
 774 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
 775 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
 776 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
 777 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
 778 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
 779 support.</p>
 780
 781 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
 782 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
 783
 784 <p><pre>
 785 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
 786     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
 787 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
 788 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
 789 %
 790 </pre></p>
 791
 792 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
 793 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
 794 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
 795 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
 796 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
 797 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
 798
 799 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
 800 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
 801 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
 802
 803 <p><table>
 804
 805 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
 806 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
 807 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
 808 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
 809 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
 810 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
 811
 812 </table></p>
 813
 814 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
 815 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
 816 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
 817 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
 818 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
 819 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
 820 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
 821
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="tags">
 824
 825
 826         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>.
 827
 828
 829       </div>
 830     </div>
 831     <div class="padding"></div>
 832
 833     <div class="entry">
 834       <div class="title">
 835         <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>
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="date">
 838         19th October 2013
 839       </div>
 840       <div class="body">
 841         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
 842 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
 843 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
 844 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
 845 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
 846 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
 847 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
 848 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
 849
 850       </div>
 851       <div class="tags">
 852
 853
 854         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>.
 855
 856
 857       </div>
 858     </div>
 859     <div class="padding"></div>
 860
 861     <div class="entry">
 862       <div class="title">
 863         <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>
 864       </div>
 865       <div class="date">
 866         15th October 2013
 867       </div>
 868       <div class="body">
 869         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
 870 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
 871 these. :)</p>
 872
 873 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
 874 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
 875 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
 876 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
 877 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
 878 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
 879 hope you will to. :)</p>
 880
 881 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
 882 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
 883 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
 884 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
 885 donated.  Are you next?</p>
 886
 887 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
 888 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
 889 statement under the heading
 890 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
 891 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
 892 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
 893 too.</p>
 894
 895       </div>
 896       <div class="tags">
 897
 898
 899         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>.
 900
 901
 902       </div>
 903     </div>
 904     <div class="padding"></div>
 905
 906     <div class="entry">
 907       <div class="title">
 908         <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>
 909       </div>
 910       <div class="date">
 911         11th October 2013
 912       </div>
 913       <div class="body">
 914         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
 915 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
 916 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
 917 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
 918 successful examples like
 919 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
 920 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
 921 (see
 922 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
 923 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
 924 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
 925 can be seen from their
 926 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
 927 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
 928 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
 929 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
 930 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
 931
 932 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
 933 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
 934 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
 935 my recent involvement in
 936 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
 937 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
 938 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
 939 when possible, given that most communication between people are
 940 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
 941 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
 942 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
 943 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
 944 important over the years.</p>
 945
 946 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
 947 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
 948 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
 949 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
 950 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
 951 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
 952 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
 953 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
 954 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
 955 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
 956 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
 957 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
 958 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
 959 speakers about this talk (from
 960 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
 961
 962 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 963
 964 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
 965 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
 966 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
 967 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
 968 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
 969 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
 970 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
 971 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
 972 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
 973 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
 974 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
 975 that project (from
 976 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
 977
 978 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 979
 980 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
 981 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
 982 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
 983 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
 984 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
 985 based community mesh networks.</p>
 986
 987 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
 988 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
 989 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
 990 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
 991 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
 992 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
 993 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
 994 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
 995 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
 996
 997 <p><table>
 998 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
 999 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
1000 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
1001 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
1002 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
1003 </table></p>
1004
1005 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
1006 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
1007 VillageTelco about
1008 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
1009 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
1010 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
1011 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
1012 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
1013 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
1014
1015 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
1016 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
1017 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
1018 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
1019
1020 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
1021 us on IRC, either channel
1022 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
1023 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
1024 irc.freenode.net.</p>
1025
1026 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
1027 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
1028 and Innovation called
1029 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
1030 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
1031 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
1032 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
1033 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
1034 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
1035 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
1036 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
1037
1038 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
1039 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
1040 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
1041 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
1042 mesh system.</p>
1043
1044       </div>
1045       <div class="tags">
1046
1047
1048         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>.
1049
1050
1051       </div>
1052     </div>
1053     <div class="padding"></div>
1054
1055     <div class="entry">
1056       <div class="title">
1057         <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>
1058       </div>
1059       <div class="date">
1060          8th October 2013
1061       </div>
1062       <div class="body">
1063         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
1064 Salvador had published a
1065 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
1066 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
1067 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
1068 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
1069 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
1070 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
1071 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
1072 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
1073 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
1074 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
1075 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
1076 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
1077 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
1078 computers without hard drives by installing one central
1079 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
1080
1081 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
1082
1083 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1084
1085 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
1086 me know. :)</p>
1087
1088       </div>
1089       <div class="tags">
1090
1091
1092         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>.
1093
1094
1095       </div>
1096     </div>
1097     <div class="padding"></div>
1098
1099     <div class="entry">
1100       <div class="title">
1101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
1102       </div>
1103       <div class="date">
1104         29th September 2013
1105       </div>
1106       <div class="body">
1107         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
1108 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
1109 complete announcement text can be found at
1110 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
1111 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
1112
1113 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
1114 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
1115 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
1116 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
1117
1118       </div>
1119       <div class="tags">
1120
1121
1122         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>.
1123
1124
1125       </div>
1126     </div>
1127     <div class="padding"></div>
1128
1129     <div class="entry">
1130       <div class="title">
1131         <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>
1132       </div>
1133       <div class="date">
1134         27th September 2013
1135       </div>
1136       <div class="body">
1137         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1138 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1139 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
1140 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
1141
1142 <ul>
1143
1144 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1145 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
1146
1147 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1148 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1149
1150 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1151 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1152 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
1153 (Youtube)</li>
1154
1155 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
1156 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
1157
1158 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1159 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
1160
1161 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1162 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1163 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
1164
1165 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1166 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
1167 (Youtube)</li>
1168
1169 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1170 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
1171
1172 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1173 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
1174
1175 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1176 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1177 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
1178
1179 </ul>
1180
1181 <p>A larger list is available from
1182 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1183 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
1184
1185 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1186 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1187 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1188 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1189 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1190 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1191 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
1192 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1193 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
1194 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1195 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1196
1197       </div>
1198       <div class="tags">
1199
1200
1201         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>.
1202
1203
1204       </div>
1205     </div>
1206     <div class="padding"></div>
1207
1208     <div class="entry">
1209       <div class="title">
1210         <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>
1211       </div>
1212       <div class="date">
1213         16th September 2013
1214       </div>
1215       <div class="body">
1216         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1217 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
1218
1219 <blockquote>
1220 <p>Hi,</p>
1221
1222 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
1223 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1224 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
1225
1226 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
1227 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
1228 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
1229 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
1230
1231 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
1232 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
1233
1234 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
1235 compared to beta1:</p>
1236
1237 <ul>
1238
1239 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
1240 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
1241 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
1242 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
1243 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
1244 main server.</li>
1245 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
1246 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
1247 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
1248 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
1249 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
1250
1251 </ul>
1252
1253 <p>Where to get it:</p>
1254
1255 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1256
1257 <ul>
1258 <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>
1259 <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>
1260 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
1261 </ul>
1262
1263 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
1264
1265 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
1266 <ul>
1267 <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>
1268 <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>
1269 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
1270 </ul>
1271
1272 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
1273
1274 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
1275 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
1276 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
1277 as the other isos.</p>
1278
1279 <p>How to report bugs</p>
1280
1281 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
1282 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
1283
1284
1285 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
1286
1287 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
1288 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1289 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
1290 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1291 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1292 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1293 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1294 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1295 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1296 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1297 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1298 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1299 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1300
1301 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1302 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1303 Squeeze release.</p>
1304
1305 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
1306
1307 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1308 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1309 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1310 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
1311 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
1312 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
1313 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
1314 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
1315 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
1316 directory.</p>
1317
1318
1319 <p>cheers,
1320 <br>        Holger</p>
1321 </blockquote>
1322
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="tags">
1325
1326
1327         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>.
1328
1329
1330       </div>
1331     </div>
1332     <div class="padding"></div>
1333
1334     <div class="entry">
1335       <div class="title">
1336         <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>
1337       </div>
1338       <div class="date">
1339         10th September 2013
1340       </div>
1341       <div class="body">
1342         <p>I was introduced to the
1343 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
1344 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
1345 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
1346 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
1347 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
1348 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
1349 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
1350 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
1351
1352 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
1353 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
1354 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
1355 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
1356 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
1357
1358 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
1359 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
1360 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
1361 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
1362 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
1363 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
1364 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
1365 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
1366 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
1367 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
1368 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
1369 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
1370 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
1371 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
1372 missing in Debian).</p>
1373
1374 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
1375 scripts
1376 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
1377 and a administrative web interface
1378 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
1379 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
1380 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
1381 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
1382 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
1383 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
1384 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
1385 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
1386 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
1387 this is really working yet, see
1388 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
1389 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
1390 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
1391 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
1392 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
1393 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
1394 with lots of half baked features.</p>
1395
1396 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
1397 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
1398 at.</p>
1399
1400 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
1401
1402 <ol>
1403
1404 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
1405 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
1406 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
1407 to the Debian installer:<p>
1408 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
1409
1410 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
1411 install on.</li>
1412
1413 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
1414 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
1415
1416 </ol>
1417
1418 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
1419
1420 <ol>
1421
1422 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
1423 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
1424 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
1425 <pre>
1426 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
1427 </pre></li>
1428 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
1429 <pre>
1430 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
1431    apt-key add -
1432 apt-get update
1433 apt-get install freedombox-setup
1434 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
1435 </pre></li>
1436 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
1437
1438 </ol>
1439
1440 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
1441 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
1442 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
1443 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
1444 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
1445
1446 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
1447 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
1448 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
1449 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
1450
1451 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
1452 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
1453 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
1454 irc.debian.org and the
1455 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
1456 mailing list</a>.</p>
1457
1458 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
1459 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
1460 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
1461 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
1462 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
1463 default password is 'secret'.</p>
1464
1465       </div>
1466       <div class="tags">
1467
1468
1469         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>.
1470
1471
1472       </div>
1473     </div>
1474     <div class="padding"></div>
1475
1476     <div class="entry">
1477       <div class="title">
1478         <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>
1479       </div>
1480       <div class="date">
1481         22nd August 2013
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="body">
1484         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1485 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
1486 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
1487
1488 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
1489
1490 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1491 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1492
1493 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1494
1495 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1496 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1497 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1498 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1499 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1500 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1501 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1502 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
1503 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1504 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1505 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1506 desktop contains
1507 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1508 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1509 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1510 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1511
1512 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
1513 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
1514 release.</p>
1515
1516 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1517 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1518 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
1519 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
1520 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
1521 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
1522 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
1523 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
1524 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
1525 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
1526 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
1527
1528 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1529
1530 <ul>
1531
1532 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
1533     work also without a attached tty.</li>
1534 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
1535     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
1536     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
1537     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
1538     required).</li>
1539
1540 </ul>
1541
1542 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1543
1544 <ul>
1545
1546 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
1547 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
1548 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
1549 stick ISO image.</li>
1550 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
1551 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
1552 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
1553     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
1554     cope with this.</li>
1555 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
1556 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
1557     empty password hashes.</li>
1558 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
1559     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
1560     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
1561
1562 </ul>
1563
1564 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1565
1566 <ul>
1567
1568 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1569     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1570 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
1571     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
1572
1573 </ul>
1574
1575 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1576
1577 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1578
1579 <ul>
1580
1581 <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>
1582
1583 <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>
1584
1585 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
1586
1587 </ul>
1588
1589 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
1590 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
1591
1592 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1593
1594 <ul>
1595
1596 <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>
1597 <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>
1598 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
1599
1600 </ul>
1601
1602 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
1603 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
1604
1605
1606 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1607
1608 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1609
1610       </div>
1611       <div class="tags">
1612
1613
1614         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>.
1615
1616
1617       </div>
1618     </div>
1619     <div class="padding"></div>
1620
1621     <div class="entry">
1622       <div class="title">
1623         <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>
1624       </div>
1625       <div class="date">
1626         18th August 2013
1627       </div>
1628       <div class="body">
1629         <p>Earlier, I reported about
1630 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
1631 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
1632 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
1633 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1634 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1635 currently on the disk.</p>
1636
1637 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1638 <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>
1639 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1640 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1641 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1642 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
1643 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1644 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
1645 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1646 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
1647 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
1648 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1649 the broken disks.</p>
1650
1651       </div>
1652       <div class="tags">
1653
1654
1655         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>.
1656
1657
1658       </div>
1659     </div>
1660     <div class="padding"></div>
1661
1662     <div class="entry">
1663       <div class="title">
1664         <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>
1665       </div>
1666       <div class="date">
1667          2nd August 2013
1668       </div>
1669       <div class="body">
1670         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
1671 have worked on a Norwegian
1672 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1673 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1674 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
1675 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
1676 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
1677 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
1678 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
1679 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
1680 progress of the translation:</p>
1681
1682 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1683
1684 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
1685 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
1686 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
1687 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
1688 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
1689 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
1690 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
1691 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
1692 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
1693 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
1694 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
1695
1696 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1697 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1698 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1699 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
1700 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
1701 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
1702 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
1703 project files currently available from
1704 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1705
1706 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1707 the updated
1708 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
1709 and
1710 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1711 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
1712 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1713 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
1714
1715       </div>
1716       <div class="tags">
1717
1718
1719         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>.
1720
1721
1722       </div>
1723     </div>
1724     <div class="padding"></div>
1725
1726     <div class="entry">
1727       <div class="title">
1728         <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>
1729       </div>
1730       <div class="date">
1731         27th July 2013
1732       </div>
1733       <div class="body">
1734         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1735 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
1736
1737 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
1738 2013-07-27</strong></p>
1739
1740 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1741 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1742
1743 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1744
1745 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1746 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1747 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1748 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1749 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1750 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1751 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1752 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1753 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1754 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1755 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1756 desktop contains
1757 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1758 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1759 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1760 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1761
1762 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1763 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1764 Squeeze release.</p>
1765
1766 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1767 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1768 release.</p>
1769
1770 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1771
1772 <ul>
1773
1774 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
1775    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
1776 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
1777    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
1778    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
1779    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
1780    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
1781 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
1782 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
1783 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
1784    crash bugs.</li>
1785
1786 </ul>
1787
1788 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1789
1790 <ul>
1791
1792 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
1793    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
1794 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
1795    netinst CD.</li>
1796 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
1797    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
1798 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
1799    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
1800    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
1801 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
1802    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
1803    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
1804 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
1805    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
1806    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
1807 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
1808    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
1809 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
1810
1811 </ul>
1812
1813 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1814
1815 <ul>
1816
1817 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
1818 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1819     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1820 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
1821
1822 </ul>
1823
1824 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1825
1826 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1827
1828 <ul>
1829
1830 <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>
1831
1832 <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>
1833
1834 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
1835
1836 </ul>
1837
1838 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
1839 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
1840
1841 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1842
1843 <ul>
1844
1845 <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>
1846 <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>
1847 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
1848
1849 </ul>
1850
1851 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
1852 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
1853
1854
1855 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1856
1857 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1858
1859       </div>
1860       <div class="tags">
1861
1862
1863         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>.
1864
1865
1866       </div>
1867     </div>
1868     <div class="padding"></div>
1869
1870     <div class="entry">
1871       <div class="title">
1872         <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>
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="date">
1875         17th July 2013
1876       </div>
1877       <div class="body">
1878         <p>Today I switched to
1879 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1880 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
1881 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1882 <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
1883 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1884 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1885 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1886 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1887 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
1888 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1889 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1890 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1891 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1892 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1893 station from now on.</p>
1894
1895 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1896 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1897 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
1898 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1899 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1900 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
1901 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1902 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1903 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1904 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1905 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1906 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1907
1908 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1909 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
1910 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1911 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1912 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
1913 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
1914 parameters are tuned:</p>
1915
1916 <ul>
1917
1918 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1919     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
1920
1921 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1922     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1923     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
1924
1925 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1926     systems.</li>
1927
1928 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1929     /etc/fstab.</li>
1930
1931 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
1932
1933 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1934     cron.daily).</li>
1935
1936 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1937     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
1938
1939 </ul>
1940
1941 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1942 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1943 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1944 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1945 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1946 from getting the data on the disk (see
1947 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
1948 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1949 right thing to do.</p>
1950
1951 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1952 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1953 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
1954
1955 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1956 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1957 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1958 instead of during my work.</p>
1959
1960 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1961 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
1962
1963 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
1964 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1965 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
1966
1967 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1968 there.</p>
1969
1970 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1971 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1972 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1973 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1974 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1975 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1976 back.</p>
1977
1978       </div>
1979       <div class="tags">
1980
1981
1982         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>.
1983
1984
1985       </div>
1986     </div>
1987     <div class="padding"></div>
1988
1989     <div class="entry">
1990       <div class="title">
1991         <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>
1992       </div>
1993       <div class="date">
1994         10th July 2013
1995       </div>
1996       <div class="body">
1997         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1998 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
1999 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2000 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2001 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2002 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2003 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2004 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2005
2006 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2007 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2008 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2009 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2010 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2011 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2012 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2013 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2014 lock up when I download a new
2015 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2016 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2017 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2018
2019 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2020 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2021 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2022 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2023 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2024 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2025
2026 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2027 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2028 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2029 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2030 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2031 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2032
2033 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2034 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2035 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2036 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2037 exist).</p>
2038
2039       </div>
2040       <div class="tags">
2041
2042
2043         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>.
2044
2045
2046       </div>
2047     </div>
2048     <div class="padding"></div>
2049
2050     <div class="entry">
2051       <div class="title">
2052         <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>
2053       </div>
2054       <div class="date">
2055          9th July 2013
2056       </div>
2057       <div class="body">
2058         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2059 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2060 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2061 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2062 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2063 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2064 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2065
2066 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2067 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2068 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2069 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2070 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2071
2072       </div>
2073       <div class="tags">
2074
2075
2076         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>.
2077
2078
2079       </div>
2080     </div>
2081     <div class="padding"></div>
2082
2083     <div class="entry">
2084       <div class="title">
2085         <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>
2086       </div>
2087       <div class="date">
2088          5th July 2013
2089       </div>
2090       <div class="body">
2091         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2092 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2093 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2094 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2095 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2096 ended up picking a
2097 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2098 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2099 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2100 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2101 on that below.</p>
2102
2103 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2104 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2105 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2106 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2107 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2108 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2109 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2110 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2111 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2112
2113 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2114 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2115 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2116 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2117 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2118 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2119 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2120
2121 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2122 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2123
2124 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2125 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2126 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2127 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2128 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2129 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2130 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2131 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2132 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2133 kernel developers as
2134 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2135 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2136 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2137 Lenovo forums, both for
2138 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2139 2012-11-10</a> and for
2140 <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
2141 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2142 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2143 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2144 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2145 There is even a
2146 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2147 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2148 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
2149
2150 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2151 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2152 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2153 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2154 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2155 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2156 fixed. :)</p>
2157
2158       </div>
2159       <div class="tags">
2160
2161
2162         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>.
2163
2164
2165       </div>
2166     </div>
2167     <div class="padding"></div>
2168
2169     <div class="entry">
2170       <div class="title">
2171         <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>
2172       </div>
2173       <div class="date">
2174          4th July 2013
2175       </div>
2176       <div class="body">
2177         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2178 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2179 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2180 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2181 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2182 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2183 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2184 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2185 with an expencive door stop.</p>
2186
2187 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2188 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2189 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2190 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2191 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2192 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2193 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
2194
2195 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2196 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2197 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2198 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2199 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2200 new laptop now. :)</p>
2201
2202 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
2203
2204       </div>
2205       <div class="tags">
2206
2207
2208         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>.
2209
2210
2211       </div>
2212     </div>
2213     <div class="padding"></div>
2214
2215     <div class="entry">
2216       <div class="title">
2217         <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>
2218       </div>
2219       <div class="date">
2220          3rd July 2013
2221       </div>
2222       <div class="body">
2223         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2224 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2225
2226 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
2227 2013-07-03</strong></p>
2228
2229 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2230 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2231
2232 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2233
2234 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2235 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2236 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2237 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2238 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2239 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2240 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2241 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2242 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2243 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2244 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2245 desktop contains
2246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2247 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2248 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2249 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2250
2251 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2252 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2253 Squeeze release.</p>
2254
2255 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2256 <ul>
2257   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
2258   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
2259     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
2260     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
2261   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
2262     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
2263     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
2264   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
2265     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
2266     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
2267     too.</li>
2268   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
2269     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
2270 </ul>
2271 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2272 <ul>
2273   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
2274   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
2275   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
2276     up for some language options.</li>
2277   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
2278   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
2279   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
2280     d-i is doing it.</li>
2281   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
2282     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
2283   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
2284     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
2285     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
2286   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
2287     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
2288   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
2289   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
2290     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
2291   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
2292     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
2293 </ul>
2294 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2295 <ul>
2296   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2297     available yet (698840).</li>
2298   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
2299 </ul>
2300 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2301
2302 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2303 <ul>
2304   <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>
2305   <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>
2306   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
2307 </ul>
2308
2309 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
2310 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
2311
2312 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
2313 <ul>
2314   <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>
2315   <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>
2316   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
2317 </ul>
2318
2319 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
2320 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
2321
2322 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2323
2324 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2325
2326       </div>
2327       <div class="tags">
2328
2329
2330         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>.
2331
2332
2333       </div>
2334     </div>
2335     <div class="padding"></div>
2336
2337     <div class="entry">
2338       <div class="title">
2339         <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>
2340       </div>
2341       <div class="date">
2342         25th June 2013
2343       </div>
2344       <div class="body">
2345         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2346 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2347 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2348 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
2349 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2350 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
2351 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
2352 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2353 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2354 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2355 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
2356
2357 <p><pre>
2358 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2359 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2360 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2361 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2362 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2363 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2364 firmware-ipw2x00
2365 firmware-ipw2x00
2366 Preconfiguring packages ...
2367 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2368 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2369 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2370 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
2371 #
2372 </pre></p>
2373
2374 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2375 printed instead:</p>
2376
2377 <p><pre>
2378 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2379 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
2380 #
2381 </pre></p>
2382
2383 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2384 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
2385
2386 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
2387 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2388 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
2389 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2390 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2391 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
2392 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2393 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
2394 machine.</p>
2395
2396 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2397 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2398 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
2399 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2400 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2401 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
2402
2403       </div>
2404       <div class="tags">
2405
2406
2407         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>.
2408
2409
2410       </div>
2411     </div>
2412     <div class="padding"></div>
2413
2414     <div class="entry">
2415       <div class="title">
2416         <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>
2417       </div>
2418       <div class="date">
2419         22nd June 2013
2420       </div>
2421       <div class="body">
2422         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2423 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
2424 which check that services are running, working, and return the
2425 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
2426 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
2427 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
2428 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
2429 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
2430 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
2431
2432 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
2433 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
2434 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
2435 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
2436 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
2437 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
2438 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
2439 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
2440 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
2441 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
2442 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
2443 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
2444 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
2445 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
2446
2447 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
2448 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
2449 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
2450 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
2451 the problem.</p>
2452
2453 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
2454 please join us on
2455 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2456 irc.debian.org</a> and the
2457 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
2458 list.</p>
2459
2460       </div>
2461       <div class="tags">
2462
2463
2464         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>.
2465
2466
2467       </div>
2468     </div>
2469     <div class="padding"></div>
2470
2471     <div class="entry">
2472       <div class="title">
2473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
2474       </div>
2475       <div class="date">
2476         17th June 2013
2477       </div>
2478       <div class="body">
2479         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
2480 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
2481 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
2482 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
2483 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
2484 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
2485 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
2486 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
2487
2488 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2489
2490 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
2491 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
2492 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
2493 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
2494 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
2495 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
2496 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
2497 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
2498 field.</p>
2499
2500 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
2501 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
2502 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
2503 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
2504 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
2505 the only one we have in our country.</p>
2506
2507 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2508 project?</strong></p>
2509
2510 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
2511 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
2512 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
2513 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
2514 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
2515 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
2516 ways to contribute.</p>
2517
2518 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
2519 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
2520 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
2521 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
2522 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
2523 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
2524 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
2525 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
2526 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
2527 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
2528
2529 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2530 Edu?</strong></p>
2531
2532 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
2533 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
2534 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
2535 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
2536 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
2537 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
2538 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
2539 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
2540
2541 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
2542 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
2543 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
2544 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
2545 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
2546 project.</p>
2547
2548 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2549 Edu?</strong></p>
2550
2551 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2552 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2553 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2554 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
2555 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2556 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2557 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2558 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2559 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
2560
2561 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2562 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2563 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2564 on.</p>
2565
2566 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2567
2568 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2569 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2570 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2571 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2572 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
2573 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2574 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
2575 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2576 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
2577
2578 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2579 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2580
2581 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
2582 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
2583 that:</p>
2584
2585 <ul>
2586
2587 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
2588
2589 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2590     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2591     of teenagers more?</li>
2592
2593 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2594     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2595     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2596     them!)</li>
2597
2598 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2599     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2600     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
2601
2602 </ul>
2603
2604 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2605 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2606 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2607 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2608 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
2609
2610       </div>
2611       <div class="tags">
2612
2613
2614         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>.
2615
2616
2617       </div>
2618     </div>
2619     <div class="padding"></div>
2620
2621     <div class="entry">
2622       <div class="title">
2623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
2624       </div>
2625       <div class="date">
2626         12th June 2013
2627       </div>
2628       <div class="body">
2629         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2630 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2631 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2632 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2633 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
2634 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
2635
2636 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2637
2638 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2639 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2640 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
2641
2642 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2643 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2644 each other.</p>
2645
2646 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2647 project?</strong></p>
2648
2649 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2650 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2651 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
2652 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2653 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2654 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2655 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2656 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2657 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2658 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2659 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2660 we'll get there one day.</p>
2661
2662 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2663 Edu?</strong></p>
2664
2665 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2666 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2667 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2668 very high quality work.</p>
2669
2670 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2671 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2672 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2673 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2674 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
2675
2676 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2677 Edu?</strong></p>
2678
2679 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2680 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2681 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
2682
2683 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2684 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2685 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2686 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2687 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2688 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2689 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2690 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2691 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2692 currently.</p>
2693
2694 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2695 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2696 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2697 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
2698 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2699 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2700 autonomous.</p>
2701
2702 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2703
2704 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
2705 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2706 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2707 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2708 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
2709
2710 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2711 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2712 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2713 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2714 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2715 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2716 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2717 X.</p>
2718
2719 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2720 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
2721 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2722 it :p)
2723
2724 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2725 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2726
2727 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2728 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2729 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2730 that.</p>
2731
2732 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2733 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2734 advantage of that.</p>
2735
2736 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2737 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2738 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2739 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2740 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2741 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2742 best solution for them.</p>
2743
2744 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2745 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2746 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
2747
2748       </div>
2749       <div class="tags">
2750
2751
2752         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>.
2753
2754
2755       </div>
2756     </div>
2757     <div class="padding"></div>
2758
2759     <div class="entry">
2760       <div class="title">
2761         <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>
2762       </div>
2763       <div class="date">
2764         11th June 2013
2765       </div>
2766       <div class="body">
2767         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2768 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2769 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
2770 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
2771 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2772 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
2773 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2774 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
2775 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2776 i915 driver used by the
2777 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2778 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
2779
2780 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
2781 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2782 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
2783 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2784 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
2785
2786 <pre>
2787 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2788 update-initramfs -u -k all
2789 </pre>
2790
2791 <p>Since March 2012 there is
2792 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2793 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2794 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2795 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
2796 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2797 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
2798 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
2799 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2800 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2801 number.</p>
2802
2803 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2804 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2805
2806 <p><pre>
2807 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2808     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2809     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2810  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2811  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2812     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2813  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2814     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2815  Latency: 0
2816  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2817  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2818  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2819  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2820  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2821  Capabilities: <access denied>
2822  Kernel driver in use: i915
2823 </pre></p>
2824
2825 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2826
2827 <p><pre>
2828 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2829        ...
2830         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2831         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2832        ...
2833 }
2834 </pre></p>
2835
2836 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2837 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2838 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2839 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
2840 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2841 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2842 yet shown up in
2843 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
2844 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2845 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2846 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2848 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2849
2850 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2851 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
2852 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
2853 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2854 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
2855 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2856 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2857 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2858 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2859 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2860 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2861 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2862
2863 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2864 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2865 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2866 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2867 backlight.</p>
2868
2869       </div>
2870       <div class="tags">
2871
2872
2873         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>.
2874
2875
2876       </div>
2877     </div>
2878     <div class="padding"></div>
2879
2880     <div class="entry">
2881       <div class="title">
2882         <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>
2883       </div>
2884       <div class="date">
2885         10th June 2013
2886       </div>
2887       <div class="body">
2888         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2889 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2890
2891 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
2892 2013-06-10</strong></p>
2893
2894 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2895 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2896
2897 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2898
2899 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2900 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2901 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2902 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2903 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2904 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2905 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2906 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2907 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2908 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2909 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2910 desktop contains
2911 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2912 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2913 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2914 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2915
2916 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2917 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2918 Squeeze release.</p>
2919
2920 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2921
2922 <ul>
2923
2924 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
2925 <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).
2926 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2927 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2928 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2929
2930 </ul>
2931
2932 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2933
2934 <ul>
2935
2936 <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.
2937 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2938 <li>New Romanian translation.
2939 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2940 <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).
2941 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2942 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2943 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2944 <li>More testsuite tests.
2945 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2946 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2947
2948 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2949 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
2950
2951 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2952 them up with GOsa².</li>
2953
2954 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
2955
2956 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2957 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2958 entered password). </li>
2959
2960 </ul>
2961
2962 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2963
2964 <ul>
2965
2966 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
2967
2968 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2969 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2970 missing import feature).</li>
2971
2972 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
2973
2974 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
2975 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2976 unfixed.</li>
2977
2978 </ul>
2979
2980 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2981
2982 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2983
2984 <ul>
2985
2986 <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>
2987
2988 <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>
2989
2990 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
2991
2992 </ul>
2993
2994 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
2995 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
2996
2997 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2998
2999 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3000
3001       </div>
3002       <div class="tags">
3003
3004
3005         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>.
3006
3007
3008       </div>
3009     </div>
3010     <div class="padding"></div>
3011
3012     <div class="entry">
3013       <div class="title">
3014         <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>
3015       </div>
3016       <div class="date">
3017          5th June 2013
3018       </div>
3019       <div class="body">
3020         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
3021 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
3022 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
3023 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
3024 the project:
3025
3026 <ol>
3027
3028 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
3029   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
3030   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
3031   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
3032   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
3033
3034 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
3035   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
3036   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
3037   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
3038   #698840</a>.</li>
3039
3040 </ol>
3041
3042 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
3043 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
3044 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
3045
3046       </div>
3047       <div class="tags">
3048
3049
3050         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>.
3051
3052
3053       </div>
3054     </div>
3055     <div class="padding"></div>
3056
3057     <div class="entry">
3058       <div class="title">
3059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
3060       </div>
3061       <div class="date">
3062          4th June 2013
3063       </div>
3064       <div class="body">
3065         <p>It has been a while since my last English
3066 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3067 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
3068 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
3069 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
3070 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
3071
3072 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3073
3074 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
3075 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
3076 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
3077 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
3078
3079 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
3080 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
3081 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
3082
3083 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3084 project?</strong></p>
3085
3086 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
3087 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
3088 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
3089 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
3090 manual.
3091
3092 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
3093 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
3094 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
3095 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
3096
3097 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
3098 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
3099 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
3100 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
3101 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
3102 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
3103 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
3104 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
3105 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
3106 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
3107
3108 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
3109 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
3110 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
3111 beautiful project.</p>
3112
3113 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3114 Edu?</strong></p>
3115
3116 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
3117 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
3118 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
3119
3120 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
3121 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
3122 of educational free software.</p>
3123
3124 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3125 Edu?</strong></p>
3126
3127 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
3128 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
3129 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
3130 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
3131 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
3132
3133 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
3134 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
3135 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
3136 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
3137 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
3138 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
3139 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
3140 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
3141
3142 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3143
3144 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
3145 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
3146 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
3147 also using the mathematical software
3148 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
3149 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
3150 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
3151
3152 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
3153 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
3154 statistics?</strong></p>
3155
3156 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
3157 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
3158 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
3159 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
3160
3161 <ul>
3162
3163 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
3164 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
3165 constructions in planar geometry
3166
3167 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
3168 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
3169 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
3170
3171 </ul>
3172
3173 <p>I like also
3174 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
3175 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
3176 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
3177
3178 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3179 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3180
3181 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
3182
3183 <ul>
3184
3185 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
3186
3187 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
3188     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
3189     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
3190
3191 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
3192
3193 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
3194     system.</li>
3195
3196 </ul>
3197
3198       </div>
3199       <div class="tags">
3200
3201
3202         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>.
3203
3204
3205       </div>
3206     </div>
3207     <div class="padding"></div>
3208
3209     <div class="entry">
3210       <div class="title">
3211         <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>
3212       </div>
3213       <div class="date">
3214          1st June 2013
3215       </div>
3216       <div class="body">
3217         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3218 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
3219 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
3220 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
3221 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
3222 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
3223 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
3224 program.</p>
3225
3226 <!-- 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 -->
3227
3228 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
3229 <p>
3230 <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>
3231 <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>
3232 <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>
3233 <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>
3234 <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>
3235 <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>
3236 <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>
3237 <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>
3238 <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>
3239 <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>
3240 <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>
3241 <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>
3242 <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>
3243 <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>
3244 </p>
3245
3246 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
3247 <p>
3248 <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>
3249 <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>
3250 <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>
3251 <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>
3252 <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>
3253 <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>
3254 </p>
3255
3256 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
3257 <p>
3258 <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>
3259 </p>
3260
3261 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
3262 <p>
3263 <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>
3264 <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>
3265 <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>
3266 <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>
3267 <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>
3268 <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>
3269 <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>
3270 <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>
3271 <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>
3272 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
3273 <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>
3274 </p>
3275
3276 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
3277 <p>
3278 <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>
3279 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
3280 </p>
3281
3282 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
3283 <p>
3284 <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>
3285 <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>
3286 <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>
3287 </p>
3288
3289 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
3290 <p>
3291 <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>
3292 <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>
3293 <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>
3294 <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>
3295 <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>
3296 </p>
3297
3298 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
3299 <p>
3300 <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>
3301 <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>
3302 <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>
3303 <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>
3304 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
3305 <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>
3306 <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>
3307 <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>
3308 <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>
3309 <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>
3310 <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>
3311 <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>
3312 <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>
3313 <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>
3314 <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>
3315 <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>
3316 <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>
3317 </p>
3318
3319 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
3320 <p>
3321 <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>
3322 <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>
3323 </p>
3324
3325 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
3326 <p>
3327 <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>
3328 <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>
3329 <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>
3330 <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>
3331 <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>
3332 <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>
3333 <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>
3334 <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>
3335 <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>
3336 <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>
3337 </p>
3338
3339 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
3340 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
3341 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
3342 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
3343 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
3344 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
3345 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
3346
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="tags">
3349
3350
3351         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>.
3352
3353
3354       </div>
3355     </div>
3356     <div class="padding"></div>
3357
3358     <div class="entry">
3359       <div class="title">
3360         <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>
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="date">
3363         27th May 2013
3364       </div>
3365       <div class="body">
3366         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3367 <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
3368 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3369 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3370 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3371 and Windows 8.</p>
3372
3373 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3374 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3375 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3376 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3377 enough to tell.</p>
3378
3379 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3380 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3381 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3382 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3383 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3384 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3385 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3386 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3387 to follow.</p>
3388
3389 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3390 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3391 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3392 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3393 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3394 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3395 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3396 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3397
3398 <p>I've updated the
3399 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3400 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3401 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3402 machine.</p>
3403
3404 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3405 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3406
3407       </div>
3408       <div class="tags">
3409
3410
3411         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>.
3412
3413
3414       </div>
3415     </div>
3416     <div class="padding"></div>
3417
3418     <div class="entry">
3419       <div class="title">
3420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3421       </div>
3422       <div class="date">
3423         25th May 2013
3424       </div>
3425       <div class="body">
3426         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3427 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3428 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3429 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3430 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3431 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3432
3433 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3434 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3435 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3436 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3437 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3438 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3439 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3440 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3441 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3442 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3443
3444 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3445 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3446 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3447 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3448 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3449 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3450
3451 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3452 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3453 on new Laptops?</p>
3454
3455       </div>
3456       <div class="tags">
3457
3458
3459         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>.
3460
3461
3462       </div>
3463     </div>
3464     <div class="padding"></div>
3465
3466     <div class="entry">
3467       <div class="title">
3468         <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>
3469       </div>
3470       <div class="date">
3471         17th May 2013
3472       </div>
3473       <div class="body">
3474         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3475 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3476 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3477 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3478 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3479 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3480 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3481 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3482 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3483 donate some money</a>.
3484
3485 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3486 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3487 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3488 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3489 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3490
3491 <p>The script,
3492 <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/>
3493 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3494 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3495 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3496
3497 <ol>
3498
3499 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3500 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3501 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3502     our configuration.</li>
3503 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3504     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3505     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3506     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3507 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3508     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3509 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3510
3511 </ol>
3512
3513 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3514 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3515 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3516 the needed packages.</p>
3517
3518 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3519 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3520 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3521 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3522 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3523 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3524
3525 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3526 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3527 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3528
3529 <p><pre>
3530 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3531 DESKTOP="lxde"
3532 </pre></p>
3533
3534 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3535 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3536 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3537 boot.</p>
3538
3539       </div>
3540       <div class="tags">
3541
3542
3543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3544
3545
3546       </div>
3547     </div>
3548     <div class="padding"></div>
3549
3550     <div class="entry">
3551       <div class="title">
3552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3553       </div>
3554       <div class="date">
3555         14th May 2013
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="body">
3558         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3559 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3560 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3561
3562 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
3563 2013-05-14</strong></p>
3564
3565 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3566 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
3567 codename "Wheezy".</p>
3568
3569 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3570
3571 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3572 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3573 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3574 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3575 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3576 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3577 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3578 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
3579
3580 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3581 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3582 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3583
3584 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3585 <ul>
3586   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3587     default.</li>
3588   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
3589   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
3590   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3591     ibus-anthy.</li>
3592 </ul>
3593
3594 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3595 <ul>
3596
3597   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3598     reliability improvements.</li>
3599   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3600     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
3601   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3602     problems.</li>
3603   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3604     direct:// URL.</li>
3605   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
3606   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
3607   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
3608   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3609     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
3610   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3611     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
3612 </ul>
3613
3614 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3615 <ul>
3616
3617   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3618     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
3619     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
3620   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
3621   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3622     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
3623   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
3624   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
3625   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3626     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
3627   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3628     password submission problem
3629     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
3630
3631 </ul>
3632
3633 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3634
3635 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3636 <ul>
3637
3638   <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>
3639   <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>
3640   <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>
3641
3642 </ul>
3643
3644 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
3645
3646 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
3647
3648 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3649
3650 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3651
3652       </div>
3653       <div class="tags">
3654
3655
3656         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>.
3657
3658
3659       </div>
3660     </div>
3661     <div class="padding"></div>
3662
3663     <div class="entry">
3664       <div class="title">
3665         <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>
3666       </div>
3667       <div class="date">
3668         11th May 2013
3669       </div>
3670       <div class="body">
3671         <P>In January,
3672 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3673 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3674 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3675 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3676 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3677 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3678 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3679 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3680 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3681 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3682 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3683 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3684
3685 <p><table>
3686 <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>
3687 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3688 <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>
3689 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3690 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3691 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3692 <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>
3693 <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>
3694 <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>
3695 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3696 </table></p>
3697
3698 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3699 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3700 available in experimental.</p>
3701
3702 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3703 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3704 for LEGO designers.</p>
3705
3706       </div>
3707       <div class="tags">
3708
3709
3710         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>.
3711
3712
3713       </div>
3714     </div>
3715     <div class="padding"></div>
3716
3717     <div class="entry">
3718       <div class="title">
3719         <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>
3720       </div>
3721       <div class="date">
3722          5th May 2013
3723       </div>
3724       <div class="body">
3725         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3726 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3727 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3728 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3729 soon.</p>
3730
3731 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3732 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3733 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3734 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3735 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3736 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3737 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3738 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3739 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3740 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3741 Edu.</a>
3742
3743 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3744 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3745 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3746 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3747 follow.<p>
3748
3749       </div>
3750       <div class="tags">
3751
3752
3753         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>.
3754
3755
3756       </div>
3757     </div>
3758     <div class="padding"></div>
3759
3760     <div class="entry">
3761       <div class="title">
3762         <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>
3763       </div>
3764       <div class="date">
3765         26th April 2013
3766       </div>
3767       <div class="body">
3768         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3769 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
3770 announcement:</p>
3771
3772 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
3773 2013-04-26</strong></p>
3774
3775 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
3776 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3777
3778 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3779
3780 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3781 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3782 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3783 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3784 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3785 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3786 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3787 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3788 installed via the network.</p>
3789
3790 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3791 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3792 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3793
3794 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3795
3796 <ul>
3797 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3798   <ul>
3799      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
3800      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
3801          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3802          manual.)</li>
3803      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
3804      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
3805      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
3806      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
3807      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
3808      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
3809      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
3810      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
3811      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
3812      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
3813      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
3814      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3815          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3816          manual</a> for more details.</li>
3817      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
3818          installation.</li>
3819      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
3820          <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>
3821   </ul></li>
3822 </ul>
3823
3824 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
3825 <ul>
3826 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3827     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3828     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
3829 </ul>
3830
3831 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
3832 <ul>
3833 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3834     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3835     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
3836 </ul>
3837
3838 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3839 <ul>
3840 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3841     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3842     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
3843 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3844     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3845     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
3846 </ul>
3847
3848 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
3849 <ul>
3850 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3851     yet.</li>
3852 </ul>
3853
3854 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
3855
3856 <ul>
3857 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3858     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3859     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
3860 </ul>
3861
3862 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3863
3864 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3865 <ul>
3866 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3867 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3868 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
3869 </ul>
3870
3871 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
3872
3873 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
3874
3875 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3876
3877 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3878
3879       </div>
3880       <div class="tags">
3881
3882
3883         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>.
3884
3885
3886       </div>
3887     </div>
3888     <div class="padding"></div>
3889
3890     <div class="entry">
3891       <div class="title">
3892         <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>
3893       </div>
3894       <div class="date">
3895         16th April 2013
3896       </div>
3897       <div class="body">
3898         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3899 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3900 Details about the gathering can be found
3901 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3902 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
3903 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3904 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3905 weekend.</p>
3906
3907 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3908 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3909 Edu release.</p>
3910
3911 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
3912
3913       </div>
3914       <div class="tags">
3915
3916
3917         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>.
3918
3919
3920       </div>
3921     </div>
3922     <div class="padding"></div>
3923
3924     <div class="entry">
3925       <div class="title">
3926         <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>
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="date">
3929          3rd April 2013
3930       </div>
3931       <div class="body">
3932         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3933 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3934 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3935 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3936
3937 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3938 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3939 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3940 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3941 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3942 BTS. :)</p>
3943
3944       </div>
3945       <div class="tags">
3946
3947
3948         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>.
3949
3950
3951       </div>
3952     </div>
3953     <div class="padding"></div>
3954
3955     <div class="entry">
3956       <div class="title">
3957         <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>
3958       </div>
3959       <div class="date">
3960         26th March 2013
3961       </div>
3962       <div class="body">
3963         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
3964 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
3965 font you use when printing.</p>
3966
3967 <p>Three years ago,
3968 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
3969 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
3970 changed their default front from
3971 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
3972 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
3973 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
3974 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
3975 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
3976 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
3977 prints.</p>
3978
3979 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
3980 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
3981 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
3982 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
3983 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
3984 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
3985 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
3986 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
3987 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
3988 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
3989 depend on the documents printed.</p>
3990
3991 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
3992 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
3993 and save some money in the process.</p>
3994
3995 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
3996 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
3997 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
3998 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
3999 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
4000 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
4001 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
4002 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
4003 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
4004
4005       </div>
4006       <div class="tags">
4007
4008
4009         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4010
4011
4012       </div>
4013     </div>
4014     <div class="padding"></div>
4015
4016     <div class="entry">
4017       <div class="title">
4018         <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>
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="date">
4021         24th March 2013
4022       </div>
4023       <div class="body">
4024         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
4025 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
4026 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
4027 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
4028 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
4029 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
4030 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
4031 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
4032 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
4033 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
4034 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
4035 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
4036
4037 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
4038 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
4039 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
4040 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
4041 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
4042 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
4043 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
4044 all I had to do was to use the
4045 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
4046 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
4047 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
4048 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
4049 xsltproc/fop (aka
4050 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
4051 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
4052 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
4053 technical detail.</p>
4054
4055 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
4056 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
4057 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
4058 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
4059 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
4060 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
4061
4062 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
4063 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
4064 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
4065 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
4066 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
4067 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
4068 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
4069 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
4070 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
4071
4072 <p><blockquote><pre>
4073 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4074 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4075   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4076     &lt;hr/&gt;
4077   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4078 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4079 </pre></blockquote></p>
4080
4081 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4082
4083 <p><blockquote><pre>
4084 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4085 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4086   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
4087     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
4088       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
4089     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
4090   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4091 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4092 </pre></blockquote></p>
4093
4094 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
4095 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
4096 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
4097 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
4098 enough.</p>
4099
4100 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
4101 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
4102 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
4103 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
4104 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
4105 look like this:</p>
4106
4107 <p><blockquote><pre>
4108 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4109 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4110   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4111     &lt;br/&gt;
4112   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4113 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4114 </pre></blockquote></p>
4115
4116 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
4117
4118 <p><blockquote><pre>
4119 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4120 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
4121   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
4122   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
4123     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
4124   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
4125 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4126 </pre></blockquote></p>
4127
4128 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
4129 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
4130 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
4131 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
4132 page.</p>
4133
4134 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
4135 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
4136 github</a>
4137 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
4138 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
4139 days.</p>
4140
4141       </div>
4142       <div class="tags">
4143
4144
4145         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>.
4146
4147
4148       </div>
4149     </div>
4150     <div class="padding"></div>
4151
4152     <div class="entry">
4153       <div class="title">
4154         <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>
4155       </div>
4156       <div class="date">
4157         17th March 2013
4158       </div>
4159       <div class="body">
4160         <p>Via
4161 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
4162 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
4163 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
4164 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4165 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
4166 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
4167 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
4168
4169 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
4170 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
4171
4172 <blockquote>
4173 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
4174 </blockquote>
4175
4176 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
4177
4178 <blockquote>
4179 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
4180 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
4181 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
4182 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
4183 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
4184 </blockquote>
4185
4186 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
4187 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
4188 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
4189 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
4190
4191 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
4192 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
4193
4194 <blockquote>
4195 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
4196 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
4197 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
4198 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
4199 </blockquote>
4200
4201 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
4202 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
4203 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
4204 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
4205 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
4206
4207 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
4208 embedding:</p>
4209
4210 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4211
4212       </div>
4213       <div class="tags">
4214
4215
4216         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>.
4217
4218
4219       </div>
4220     </div>
4221     <div class="padding"></div>
4222
4223     <div class="entry">
4224       <div class="title">
4225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
4226       </div>
4227       <div class="date">
4228          8th March 2013
4229       </div>
4230       <div class="body">
4231         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
4232 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
4233 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
4234 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4235 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
4236 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
4237 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
4238
4239 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
4240
4241 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
4242 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
4243
4244 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
4245 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
4246 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
4247 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
4248 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
4249 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
4250
4251 <p>Images are available for download at
4252 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
4253
4254 <p>md5sums:
4255 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4256 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4257 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4258
4259 <p>sha1sums:
4260 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
4261 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
4262 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
4263
4264 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
4265
4266 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
4267 2013-03-03:</p>
4268
4269 <ul>
4270   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
4271   <ul>
4272         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
4273         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
4274   </ul></li>
4275   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
4276   <ul>
4277         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
4278         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
4279   </ul></li>
4280   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
4281      <ul>
4282         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
4283         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
4284         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
4285                 Closes: #664596</li>
4286         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
4287                 Closes: #664976</li>
4288         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
4289            <ul>
4290                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
4291                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
4292            </ul></li>
4293         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
4294            <ul>
4295                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
4296                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
4297                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
4298                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
4299                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
4300            </ul></li>
4301         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
4302     </ul>
4303   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
4304     <ul>
4305         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
4306     </ul></li>
4307 </ul>
4308
4309 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
4310 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
4311 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
4312 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
4313
4314 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
4315 mailinglist
4316 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
4317 </p></blockquote>
4318
4319 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
4320
4321       </div>
4322       <div class="tags">
4323
4324
4325         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>.
4326
4327
4328       </div>
4329     </div>
4330     <div class="padding"></div>
4331
4332     <div class="entry">
4333       <div class="title">
4334         <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>
4335       </div>
4336       <div class="date">
4337          3rd March 2013
4338       </div>
4339       <div class="body">
4340         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
4341 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
4342 support using
4343 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
4344 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
4345 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
4346 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
4347 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
4348 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
4349 using the GNU LGPL, and
4350 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
4351
4352 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
4353 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
4354 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
4355 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
4356 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
4357 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
4358
4359 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
4360 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
4361 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
4362 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
4363 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
4364 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
4365 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
4366 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
4367 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
4368 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
4369 signal distribution is handled using
4370 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
4371 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
4372 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
4373 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
4374 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
4375 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
4376 them up a bit more first.</p>
4377
4378 <p>The development is coordinated on the
4379 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
4380 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
4381 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
4382 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
4383 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
4384 development.</p>
4385
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="tags">
4388
4389
4390         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>.
4391
4392
4393       </div>
4394     </div>
4395     <div class="padding"></div>
4396
4397     <div class="entry">
4398       <div class="title">
4399         <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>
4400       </div>
4401       <div class="date">
4402         27th February 2013
4403       </div>
4404       <div class="body">
4405         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
4406 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
4407 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
4408 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
4409 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
4410 (where I am the chair of the board) and
4411 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
4412 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
4413 GNU», with this description:
4414
4415 <p><blockquote>
4416 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
4417 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
4418 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
4419 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
4420 </blockquote></p>
4421
4422 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
4423 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
4424 am really curious how many will show up.  See
4425 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
4426 page</a> for the location details.</p>
4427
4428       </div>
4429       <div class="tags">
4430
4431
4432         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>.
4433
4434
4435       </div>
4436     </div>
4437     <div class="padding"></div>
4438
4439     <div class="entry">
4440       <div class="title">
4441         <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>
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="date">
4444         15th February 2013
4445       </div>
4446       <div class="body">
4447         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
4448 now a great source of free maps available from
4449 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
4450 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
4451 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
4452 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
4453 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
4454 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
4455 page for descriptions).</p>
4456
4457 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
4458 map you can just edit the
4459 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
4460 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
4461
4462       </div>
4463       <div class="tags">
4464
4465
4466         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>.
4467
4468
4469       </div>
4470     </div>
4471     <div class="padding"></div>
4472
4473     <div class="entry">
4474       <div class="title">
4475         <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>
4476       </div>
4477       <div class="date">
4478         12th February 2013
4479       </div>
4480       <div class="body">
4481         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
4482 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
4483 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
4484 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
4485 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
4486 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
4487 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
4488 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
4489 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
4490 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
4491 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
4492 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
4493 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
4494 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
4495 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
4496 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
4497
4498 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
4499 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
4500 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
4501 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
4502 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
4503 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
4504 fields:</p>
4505
4506 <p><pre>
4507 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
4508 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4509 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
4510 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4511 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
4512 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4513 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4514 </pre></p>
4515
4516 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
4517 answer regarding
4518 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
4519 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
4520 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
4521 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
4522
4523 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
4524
4525 <p><pre>
4526 BEGIN:VCARD
4527 VERSION:2.1
4528 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
4529 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
4530 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
4531 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
4532 REV:20130212T095000Z
4533 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
4534 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
4535 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
4536 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
4537 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
4538 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
4539 END:VCARD
4540 </pre></p>
4541
4542 <p>The resulting QR code created using
4543 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
4544 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
4545 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
4546 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
4547 system.</p>
4548
4549 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
4550
4551 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
4552 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
4553 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
4554 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
4555
4556 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
4557 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
4558
4559       </div>
4560       <div class="tags">
4561
4562
4563         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>.
4564
4565
4566       </div>
4567     </div>
4568     <div class="padding"></div>
4569
4570     <div class="entry">
4571       <div class="title">
4572         <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>
4573       </div>
4574       <div class="date">
4575         10th February 2013
4576       </div>
4577       <div class="body">
4578         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
4579
4580 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
4581 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
4582 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
4583 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
4584 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
4585 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
4586 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
4587 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
4588 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
4589 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
4590 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
4591
4592 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
4593 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
4594 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
4595 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
4596 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
4597 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
4598 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
4599 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
4600 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
4601 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
4602 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
4603 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
4604 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
4605 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
4606 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
4607 ones own
4608 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
4609 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
4610 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
4611 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
4612 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
4613 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
4614 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
4615 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
4616 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
4617 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
4618 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
4619
4620 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
4621 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
4622 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
4623 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
4624 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
4625 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
4626
4627 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
4628 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
4629 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
4630
4631       </div>
4632       <div class="tags">
4633
4634
4635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4636
4637
4638       </div>
4639     </div>
4640     <div class="padding"></div>
4641
4642     <div class="entry">
4643       <div class="title">
4644         <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>
4645       </div>
4646       <div class="date">
4647          2nd February 2013
4648       </div>
4649       <div class="body">
4650         <p>My
4651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4652 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4653 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4654 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4655 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4656 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4657 version too.</p>
4658
4659 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4660 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4661 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4662 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4663 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4664 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4665 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4666 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4667
4668 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4669 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4670 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4671 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4672 it. :)</p>
4673
4674 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4675 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4676 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4677
4678       </div>
4679       <div class="tags">
4680
4681
4682         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>.
4683
4684
4685       </div>
4686     </div>
4687     <div class="padding"></div>
4688
4689     <div class="entry">
4690       <div class="title">
4691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4692       </div>
4693       <div class="date">
4694         22nd January 2013
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="body">
4697         <p>Yesterday, I
4698 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4699 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4700 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4701 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4702 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4703 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4704 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4705 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4706 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4707 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4708 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4709 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4710 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4711
4712 <pre>
4713 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4714 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4715 </pre>
4716
4717 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4718 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4719 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4720 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4721
4722 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4723 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4724 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4725 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4726 word.</p>
4727
4728 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4729 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4730 process.</p>
4731
4732 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4733 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4734
4735       </div>
4736       <div class="tags">
4737
4738
4739         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>.
4740
4741
4742       </div>
4743     </div>
4744     <div class="padding"></div>
4745
4746     <div class="entry">
4747       <div class="title">
4748         <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>
4749       </div>
4750       <div class="date">
4751         21st January 2013
4752       </div>
4753       <div class="body">
4754         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4755 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4756 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4757 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4758 it, fetch the
4759 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4760 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4761 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4762 autostart script.</p>
4763
4764 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4765
4766 <ul>
4767
4768 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4769 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4770
4771 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4772 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4773 initially did.</li>
4774
4775 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4776 the APT database, a database
4777 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4778 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4779
4780 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4781 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4782 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4783 package or packages.</li>
4784
4785 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4786 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4787
4788 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4789 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4790
4791 </ul>
4792
4793 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4794 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4795 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4796 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4797
4798 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4799 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4800 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4801 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4802 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4803
4804 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4805 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4806 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4807 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4808 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4809 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4810 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4811 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4812
4813 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4814 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4815 '<tt>svn checkout
4816 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4817 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4818 devscripts package.</p>
4819
4820 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4821 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4822 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4823 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4824 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4825
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="tags">
4828
4829
4830         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>.
4831
4832
4833       </div>
4834     </div>
4835     <div class="padding"></div>
4836
4837     <div class="entry">
4838       <div class="title">
4839         <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>
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="date">
4842         19th January 2013
4843       </div>
4844       <div class="body">
4845         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4846 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4847 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4848 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4849 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4850 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4851 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4852 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4853 not a durable solution.
4854
4855 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4856 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4857
4858 <ul>
4859
4860 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4861   than A4).</li>
4862 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4863 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4864 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4865 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4866 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4867 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4868 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4869 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4870 size).</li>
4871 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4872   X.org packages.</li>
4873 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4874   the time).
4875
4876 </ul>
4877
4878 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4879 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4880 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4881 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4882 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4883 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4884 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4885 still be useful.</p>
4886
4887 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4888 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4889 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4890 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4891 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4892 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4893
4894       </div>
4895       <div class="tags">
4896
4897
4898         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>.
4899
4900
4901       </div>
4902     </div>
4903     <div class="padding"></div>
4904
4905     <div class="entry">
4906       <div class="title">
4907         <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>
4908       </div>
4909       <div class="date">
4910         18th January 2013
4911       </div>
4912       <div class="body">
4913         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4914 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4915 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4916 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4917 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4918 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4919 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4920
4921 <pre>
4922 #!/usr/bin/python
4923 import sys
4924 import apt
4925 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4926     cache = apt.Cache()
4927     cache.open(None)
4928     thepkgs = []
4929     for pkg in cache:
4930         version = pkg.candidate
4931         if version is None:
4932             version = pkg.installed
4933         if version is None:
4934             continue
4935         record = version.record
4936         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4937             continue
4938         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4939         for t in mime_types:
4940             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4941             if t == mimetype:
4942                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4943     return thepkgs
4944 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4945 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4946     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4947 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4948 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4949     print "  %s" %pkg
4950 </pre>
4951
4952 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4953
4954 <pre>
4955 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4956 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4957   gecko-mediaplayer
4958 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4959 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4960   browser-plugin-gnash
4961 %
4962 </pre>
4963
4964 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4965 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4966 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4967 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4968
4969 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4970 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4971 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4972 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4973 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4974 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4975
4976       </div>
4977       <div class="tags">
4978
4979
4980         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>.
4981
4982
4983       </div>
4984     </div>
4985     <div class="padding"></div>
4986
4987     <div class="entry">
4988       <div class="title">
4989         <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>
4990       </div>
4991       <div class="date">
4992         16th January 2013
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="body">
4995         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4996 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4997 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4998 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4999 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5000 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5001 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5002 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5003
5004 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5005 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5006 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5007 can be found on the
5008 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5009 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5010 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5011 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5012 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5013
5014 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5015
5016 <pre>
5017   count MIME type
5018   ----- -----------------------
5019      32 text/plain
5020      30 audio/mpeg
5021      29 image/png
5022      28 image/jpeg
5023      27 application/ogg
5024      26 audio/x-mp3
5025      25 image/tiff
5026      25 image/gif
5027      22 image/bmp
5028      22 audio/x-wav
5029      20 audio/x-flac
5030      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5031      18 video/x-ms-asf
5032      18 audio/x-musepack
5033      18 audio/x-mpeg
5034      18 application/x-ogg
5035      17 video/mpeg
5036      17 audio/x-scpls
5037      17 audio/ogg
5038      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5039 </pre>
5040
5041 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5042
5043 <pre>
5044   count MIME type
5045   ----- -----------------------
5046      33 text/plain
5047      32 image/png
5048      32 image/jpeg
5049      29 audio/mpeg
5050      27 image/gif
5051      26 image/tiff
5052      26 application/ogg
5053      25 audio/x-mp3
5054      22 image/bmp
5055      21 audio/x-wav
5056      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5057      19 audio/x-mpeg
5058      18 video/mpeg
5059      18 audio/x-scpls
5060      18 audio/x-flac
5061      18 application/x-ogg
5062      17 video/x-ms-asf
5063      17 text/html
5064      17 audio/x-musepack
5065      16 image/x-xbitmap
5066 </pre>
5067
5068 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5069
5070 <pre>
5071   count MIME type
5072   ----- -----------------------
5073      31 text/plain
5074      31 image/png
5075      31 image/jpeg
5076      29 audio/mpeg
5077      28 application/ogg
5078      27 image/gif
5079      26 image/tiff
5080      26 audio/x-mp3
5081      23 audio/x-wav
5082      22 image/bmp
5083      21 audio/x-flac
5084      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5085      19 audio/x-mpeg
5086      18 video/x-ms-asf
5087      18 video/mpeg
5088      18 audio/x-scpls
5089      18 application/x-ogg
5090      17 audio/x-musepack
5091      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5092      16 video/x-msvideo
5093 </pre>
5094
5095 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5096 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5097 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5098 issues.</p>
5099
5100 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5101 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5102
5103       </div>
5104       <div class="tags">
5105
5106
5107         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>.
5108
5109
5110       </div>
5111     </div>
5112     <div class="padding"></div>
5113
5114     <div class="entry">
5115       <div class="title">
5116         <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>
5117       </div>
5118       <div class="date">
5119         15th January 2013
5120       </div>
5121       <div class="body">
5122         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5124 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5125 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5126 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5127 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5128 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5129 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5130 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5131 packages.</p>
5132
5133 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5134 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5135 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5136 modalias.</p>
5137
5138 <p><blockquote>
5139 Package: package-name
5140 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5141 </blockquote></p>
5142
5143 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5144 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5145
5146 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5147 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5148
5149 <p><blockquote>
5150 Package: cheese
5151 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5152 </blockquote></p>
5153
5154 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5155 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5156
5157 <p><blockquote>
5158 Package: pcmciautils
5159 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5160 </blockquote></p>
5161
5162 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5163 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5164
5165 <p><blockquote>
5166 Package: colorhug-client
5167 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5168 </blockquote></p>
5169
5170 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5171 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5172 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5173
5174 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5175 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5176 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5177 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5178 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5179 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5180 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5181 Raring.</p>
5182
5183 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5184 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5185 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5186 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5187 try the
5188 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5189 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5190 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5191 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5192
5193 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5194 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5195
5196 <p><blockquote>
5197 % ./hw-support-lookup
5198 <br>yubikey-personalization
5199 <br>%
5200 </blockquote></p>
5201
5202 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5203 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5204
5205 <p><blockquote>
5206 % ./hw-support-lookup
5207 <br>pcmciautils
5208 <br>%
5209 </blockquote></p>
5210
5211 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5212 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5213 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5214
5215 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5216 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5217 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5218 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5219 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5220 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5221 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5222 see if it work.</p>
5223
5224 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5225 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5226 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5227 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5228
5229       </div>
5230       <div class="tags">
5231
5232
5233         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>.
5234
5235
5236       </div>
5237     </div>
5238     <div class="padding"></div>
5239
5240     <div class="entry">
5241       <div class="title">
5242         <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>
5243       </div>
5244       <div class="date">
5245         14th January 2013
5246       </div>
5247       <div class="body">
5248         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5249 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5250 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5251 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5252 in
5253 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5254 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5255
5256 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5257
5258 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5259 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5260 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5261 &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;,
5262 &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
5263 &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;.
5264
5265 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5266 this shell script:</p>
5267
5268 <pre>
5269 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5270 </pre>
5271
5272 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5273 using modinfo:</p>
5274
5275 <pre>
5276 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5277 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5278 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5279 %
5280 </pre>
5281
5282 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5283
5284 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5285 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5286
5287 <p><blockquote>
5288 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5289 </blockquote></p>
5290
5291 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5292
5293 <pre>
5294  v   00008086  (vendor)
5295  d   00002770  (device)
5296  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5297  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5298  bc  06        (bus class)
5299  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5300  i   00        (interface)
5301 </pre>
5302
5303 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5304 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5305 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5306 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5307
5308 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5309 means.</p>
5310
5311 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5312
5313 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5314 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5315
5316 <p><blockquote>
5317 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5318 </blockquote></p>
5319
5320 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5321
5322 <pre>
5323  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5324  p    0001  (device product)
5325  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5326  dc     09  (device class)
5327  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5328  dp     00  (device protocol)
5329  ic     09  (interface class)
5330  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5331  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5332 </pre>
5333
5334 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5335 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5336 these alias entries show up:</p>
5337
5338 <p><blockquote>
5339 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5340 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5341 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5342 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5343 </blockquote></p>
5344
5345 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5346 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5347 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5348
5349 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5350
5351 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5352 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5353
5354 <p><blockquote>
5355 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5356 </blockquote></p>
5357
5358 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5359
5360 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5361
5362 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5363 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5364 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5365
5366 <p><blockquote>
5367 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5368 </blockquote></p>
5369
5370 <p>The values present are</p>
5371
5372 <pre>
5373  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5374  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5375  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5376  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5377  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5378  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5379  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5380  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5381  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5382  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5383  ct   10             (chassis type)
5384  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5385 </pre>
5386
5387 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5388 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5389
5390 <pre>
5391   3 Desktop
5392   4 Low Profile Desktop
5393   5 Pizza Box
5394   6 Mini Tower
5395   7 Tower
5396   8 Portable
5397   9 Laptop
5398  10 Notebook
5399  11 Hand Held
5400  12 Docking Station
5401  13 All In One
5402  14 Sub Notebook
5403  15 Space-saving
5404  16 Lunch Box
5405  17 Main Server Chassis
5406  18 Expansion Chassis
5407  19 Sub Chassis
5408  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5409  21 Peripheral Chassis
5410  22 RAID Chassis
5411  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5412  24 Sealed-case PC
5413  25 Multi-system
5414  26 CompactPCI
5415  27 AdvancedTCA
5416  28 Blade
5417  29 Blade Enclosing
5418 </pre>
5419
5420 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5421 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5422 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5423
5424 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5425
5426 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5427 test machine:</p>
5428
5429 <p><blockquote>
5430 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5431 </blockquote></p>
5432
5433 <p>The values present are</p>
5434
5435 <pre>
5436   ty  01  (type)
5437   pr  00  (prototype)
5438   id  00  (id)
5439   ex  00  (extra)
5440 </pre>
5441
5442 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5443 the valid values are.</p>
5444
5445 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5446
5447 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5448 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5449 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5450 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5451 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5452 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5453 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5454
5455 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5456
5457 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5458 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5459
5460 <pre>
5461   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5462     echo "$id" ; \
5463     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5464   done
5465 </pre>
5466
5467 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5468 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5469
5470 <pre>
5471   acpi:ACPI0003:
5472     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5473   acpi:device:
5474   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5475   acpi:IBM0068:
5476     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5477     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5478     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5479     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5480   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5481     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5482     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5483     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5484   [...]
5485 </pre>
5486
5487 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5488 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5489 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5490 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5491
5492 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5493 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5494 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5495
5496       </div>
5497       <div class="tags">
5498
5499
5500         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>.
5501
5502
5503       </div>
5504     </div>
5505     <div class="padding"></div>
5506
5507     <div class="entry">
5508       <div class="title">
5509         <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>
5510       </div>
5511       <div class="date">
5512         10th January 2013
5513       </div>
5514       <div class="body">
5515         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5516 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5517 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5518 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5519 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5520 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5521 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5522 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5523 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5524 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5525 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5526 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5527 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5528 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5529 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5530 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5531 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5532 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5533
5534       </div>
5535       <div class="tags">
5536
5537
5538         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>.
5539
5540
5541       </div>
5542     </div>
5543     <div class="padding"></div>
5544
5545     <div class="entry">
5546       <div class="title">
5547         <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>
5548       </div>
5549       <div class="date">
5550          9th January 2013
5551       </div>
5552       <div class="body">
5553         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5554 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5555 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5556 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5557 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5558 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5559 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5560 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5561 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5562 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5563 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5564
5565 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5566 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5567 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5568 simple:
5569
5570 <ul>
5571
5572 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5573   starting when a user log in.</li>
5574
5575 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5576   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5577
5578 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5579   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5580   packages.</li>
5581
5582 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5583   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5584
5585 </ul>
5586
5587 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5588 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5589 discover database to find packages and
5590 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5591 packages.</p>
5592
5593 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5594 draft package is now checked into
5595 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5596 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5597 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5598 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5599 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5600 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5601 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5602 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5603 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5604 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5605 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5606 because of the freeze).</p>
5607
5608 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5609 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5610 inserted):</p>
5611
5612 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5613
5614 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5615 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5616 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5617
5618 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5619 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5620 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5621 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5622 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5623 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5624 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5625
5626 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5627 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5628 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5629 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5630 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5631 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5632 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5633 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5634 not be installed?</p>
5635
5636 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5637 please send me an email. :)</p>
5638
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="tags">
5641
5642
5643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5644
5645
5646       </div>
5647     </div>
5648     <div class="padding"></div>
5649
5650     <div class="entry">
5651       <div class="title">
5652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="date">
5655          2nd January 2013
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="body">
5658         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5659 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5660 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5661 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5662 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5663 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5664 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5665 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5666 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5667 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5668
5669 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5670 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5671 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5672
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="tags">
5675
5676
5677         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>.
5678
5679
5680       </div>
5681     </div>
5682     <div class="padding"></div>
5683
5684     <div class="entry">
5685       <div class="title">
5686         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5687       </div>
5688       <div class="date">
5689         28th December 2012
5690       </div>
5691       <div class="body">
5692         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
5693 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5694 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
5695 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
5696 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
5697 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
5698 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
5699 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
5700 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
5701 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
5702 followed by many others. :)</p>
5703
5704 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
5705 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
5706 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
5707 you want to donate to the project.</p>
5708
5709       </div>
5710       <div class="tags">
5711
5712
5713         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>.
5714
5715
5716       </div>
5717     </div>
5718     <div class="padding"></div>
5719
5720     <div class="entry">
5721       <div class="title">
5722         <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>
5723       </div>
5724       <div class="date">
5725         25th December 2012
5726       </div>
5727       <div class="body">
5728         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5729 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5730
5731 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5732 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5733 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5734 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5735 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5736 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5737 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5738 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5739 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5740 name.</p>
5741
5742 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5743 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5744 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5745
5746 <blockquote><pre>
5747 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5748 cd bitcoin
5749 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5750 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5751 </pre></blockquote>
5752
5753 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5754 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5755 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5756 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5757 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5758 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5759 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5760 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5761 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5762
5763 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5764 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5765 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5766
5767       </div>
5768       <div class="tags">
5769
5770
5771         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>.
5772
5773
5774       </div>
5775     </div>
5776     <div class="padding"></div>
5777
5778     <div class="entry">
5779       <div class="title">
5780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5781       </div>
5782       <div class="date">
5783         21st December 2012
5784       </div>
5785       <div class="body">
5786         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5787 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5788 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5789 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5790 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5791 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5792 is now maintained by a
5793 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5794 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5795 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5796 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5797 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5798 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5799 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5800 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5801 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5802 Corallo in a
5803 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5804 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5805 Debian package.</p>
5806
5807 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5808 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5809 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5810 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5811 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5812 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5813 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5814 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5815 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5816 new version to unstable.
5817
5818 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5819 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5820 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5821 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5822 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5823 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5824 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5825 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5826 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5827 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5828 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5829 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5830 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5831 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5832 have not tested them.</p>
5833
5834 <p>My
5835 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5836 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5837 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5838 years ago, as can be
5839 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5840 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5841 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5842 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5843 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5844 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5845 the same address as last time,
5846 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5847
5848       </div>
5849       <div class="tags">
5850
5851
5852         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>.
5853
5854
5855       </div>
5856     </div>
5857     <div class="padding"></div>
5858
5859     <div class="entry">
5860       <div class="title">
5861         <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>
5862       </div>
5863       <div class="date">
5864         18th December 2012
5865       </div>
5866       <div class="body">
5867         <p>A few days ago I came across
5868 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
5869 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
5870 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
5871 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
5872 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
5873 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
5874 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
5875 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
5876 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
5877
5878 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
5879 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
5880 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
5881 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
5882
5883 <blockquote><pre>
5884 2004-05-27 Book Store
5885       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
5886       Liabilities:Visa
5887 </pre></blockquote>
5888
5889 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
5890 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
5891 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
5892 Spang</a>,
5893 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
5894 Keen</a>,
5895 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
5896 Cantino</a> and
5897 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
5898 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
5899 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
5900 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
5901 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
5902
5903 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
5904 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
5905 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
5906 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
5907 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
5908
5909 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
5910 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
5911 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
5912 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
5913 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
5914 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
5915 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
5916 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
5917 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
5918
5919       </div>
5920       <div class="tags">
5921
5922
5923         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>.
5924
5925
5926       </div>
5927     </div>
5928     <div class="padding"></div>
5929
5930     <div class="entry">
5931       <div class="title">
5932         <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>
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="date">
5935          6th December 2012
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="body">
5938         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
5939 Oslo</a>, we use the
5940 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
5941 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
5942 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
5943 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
5944 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
5945 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
5946 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
5947 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
5948 Python.</p>
5949
5950 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
5951 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
5952 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
5953 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
5954 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
5955 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
5956
5957 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
5958 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
5959 user currently logged in:</p>
5960
5961 <blockquote><pre>
5962 #!/usr/bin/env python
5963 import getpass
5964 import xmlrpclib
5965 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
5966 username = getpass.getuser()
5967 password = getpass.getpass()
5968 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
5969 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
5970 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
5971 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
5972 result = server.logout(sessionid)
5973 print result
5974 </pre></blockquote>
5975
5976 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
5977 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
5978
5979       </div>
5980       <div class="tags">
5981
5982
5983         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>.
5984
5985
5986       </div>
5987     </div>
5988     <div class="padding"></div>
5989
5990     <div class="entry">
5991       <div class="title">
5992         <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>
5993       </div>
5994       <div class="date">
5995         17th November 2012
5996       </div>
5997       <div class="body">
5998         <p>While working on a
5999 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
6000 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
6001 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
6002 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
6003 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
6004 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
6005
6006 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
6007 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
6008 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
6009 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
6010 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
6011 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
6012 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
6013 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
6014 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
6015 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
6016 arguments.</p>
6017
6018 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
6019 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
6020 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
6021 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
6022 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
6023 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
6024 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
6025 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
6026
6027 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
6028 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
6029 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
6030 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
6031 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
6032 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
6033 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
6034 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
6035 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
6036 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
6037 correct right holder.</p>
6038
6039 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
6040 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
6041 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
6042 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
6043 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
6044 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
6045 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
6046 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
6047 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
6048 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
6049 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
6050 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
6051 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
6052 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
6053
6054 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
6055 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
6056 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
6057
6058 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
6059 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
6060
6061       </div>
6062       <div class="tags">
6063
6064
6065         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>.
6066
6067
6068       </div>
6069     </div>
6070     <div class="padding"></div>
6071
6072     <div class="entry">
6073       <div class="title">
6074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
6075       </div>
6076       <div class="date">
6077         14th November 2012
6078       </div>
6079       <div class="body">
6080         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
6081 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6082 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
6083 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
6084 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
6085 the people behind the German
6086 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
6087 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
6088 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
6089
6090 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6091
6092 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
6093 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
6094 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
6095
6096 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
6097 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
6098 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
6099 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
6100 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
6101 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
6102
6103 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
6104 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
6105 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
6106 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
6107 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
6108 relationship management and the communication processes in the
6109 project.</p>
6110
6111 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
6112 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
6113 and a yoga teacher.</p>
6114
6115 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6116 project?</strong></p>
6117
6118 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
6119
6120 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
6121 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
6122 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
6123 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
6124 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
6125 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
6126 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
6127 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
6128 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
6129 parents.</p>
6130
6131 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
6132 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
6133 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
6134 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
6135 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
6136 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
6137 Germany.</p>
6138
6139 <p>For information about our school project you can read
6140 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
6141 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
6142
6143 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6144 Edu?</strong></p>
6145
6146 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
6147 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
6148
6149 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
6150 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
6151 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
6152 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
6153 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
6154 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
6155 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
6156 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
6157 teachers, parents...</p>
6158
6159 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6160 Edu?</strong></p>
6161
6162 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
6163 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6164
6165 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
6166 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
6167 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
6168 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
6169 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6170
6171 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
6172 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
6173 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
6174 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
6175 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
6176 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
6177 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
6178
6179 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6180
6181 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
6182 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
6183 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
6184 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
6185
6186 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6187 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6188
6189 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
6190 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
6191 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
6192 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
6193 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
6194
6195 <ul>
6196
6197 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
6198 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
6199 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
6200
6201 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
6202 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
6203 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
6204 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
6205 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
6206 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
6207 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
6208
6209 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
6210 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
6211 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
6212 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
6213
6214 </ul>
6215
6216       </div>
6217       <div class="tags">
6218
6219
6220         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>.
6221
6222
6223       </div>
6224     </div>
6225     <div class="padding"></div>
6226
6227     <div class="entry">
6228       <div class="title">
6229         <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>
6230       </div>
6231       <div class="date">
6232          4th November 2012
6233       </div>
6234       <div class="body">
6235         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
6236 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
6237 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
6238 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
6239 see how a member of the bitcoin community
6240 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
6241 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
6242 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
6243 competition.  My thoughts go to the
6244 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
6245 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
6246 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
6247 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
6248 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
6249
6250 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
6251 that the community already seem to have
6252 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
6253 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
6254 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
6255 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
6256 wealth is available.</p>
6257
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="tags">
6260
6261
6262         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>.
6263
6264
6265       </div>
6266     </div>
6267     <div class="padding"></div>
6268
6269     <div class="entry">
6270       <div class="title">
6271         <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>
6272       </div>
6273       <div class="date">
6274         26th October 2012
6275       </div>
6276       <div class="body">
6277         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
6278 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
6279 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
6280 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
6281 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
6282 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
6283 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
6284 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
6285 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
6286 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
6287 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
6288 it every time.</p>
6289
6290 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
6291 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
6292 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
6293 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
6294 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
6295 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
6296 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
6297 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
6298 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
6299 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
6300 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
6301 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
6302
6303 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
6304 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
6305 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
6306 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
6307 article: First the unplanned outage:
6308
6309 <blockquote><pre>
6310 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
6311 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
6312 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
6313 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
6314 Duration:    40 minutes
6315 Scope:       Exchange 2003
6316 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
6317              a cluster failover.
6318
6319 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
6320              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
6321 Technician:  [xxx]
6322 </pre></blockquote>
6323
6324 Next the planned outage:
6325
6326 <blockquote><pre>
6327 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
6328 Severity:    Major (Planned)
6329 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
6330 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
6331 Duration:    10 hours
6332 Scope:       H2 Transport
6333 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
6334              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
6335              4510s.
6336 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
6337              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
6338              connectivity.
6339 Technician:  [xxx]
6340 </pre></blockquote>
6341
6342 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
6343 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
6344 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
6345 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
6346 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
6347 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
6348 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
6349
6350 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
6351 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
6352 university too.  We do register
6353 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
6354 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
6355 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
6356 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
6357 for other sites to consider too?</p>
6358
6359       </div>
6360       <div class="tags">
6361
6362
6363         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>.
6364
6365
6366       </div>
6367     </div>
6368     <div class="padding"></div>
6369
6370     <div class="entry">
6371       <div class="title">
6372         <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>
6373       </div>
6374       <div class="date">
6375         22nd October 2012
6376       </div>
6377       <div class="body">
6378         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
6379 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
6380 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
6381 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
6382 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
6383 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
6384 background information is available in Norwegian from
6385 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
6386 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
6387 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
6388 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
6389 willing to
6390 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
6391 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
6392 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
6393 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
6394 sounded like
6395 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
6396 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
6397 later.</p>
6398
6399 <p>And thought this action is
6400 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
6401 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
6402 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
6403 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
6404 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
6405 rights.</p>
6406
6407 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
6408 unacceptable terms.  For example
6409 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
6410 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
6411 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
6412 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
6413 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
6414
6415 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
6416 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
6417 restored the account of the user, as reported by
6418 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
6419 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
6420 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
6421 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
6422 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
6423 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
6424 reading two opinions from
6425 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
6426 Phipps</a> and
6427 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
6428 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
6429 details about the original story.</p>
6430
6431       </div>
6432       <div class="tags">
6433
6434
6435         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>.
6436
6437
6438       </div>
6439     </div>
6440     <div class="padding"></div>
6441
6442     <div class="entry">
6443       <div class="title">
6444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
6445       </div>
6446       <div class="date">
6447         18th October 2012
6448       </div>
6449       <div class="body">
6450         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
6451 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
6452 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
6453 across a marvellous drawing by
6454 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
6455 visualising some of what is going on.
6456
6457 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
6458 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
6459
6460 <blockquote>
6461 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
6462 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
6463 </blockquote>
6464
6465 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
6466 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
6467 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
6468 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
6469 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
6470 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
6471
6472       </div>
6473       <div class="tags">
6474
6475
6476         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>.
6477
6478
6479       </div>
6480     </div>
6481     <div class="padding"></div>
6482
6483     <div class="entry">
6484       <div class="title">
6485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
6486       </div>
6487       <div class="date">
6488         12th October 2012
6489       </div>
6490       <div class="body">
6491         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
6492 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
6493 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
6494 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
6495 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
6496 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
6497 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
6498 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
6499 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
6500 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
6501 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
6502 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
6503 matter".</p>
6504
6505 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
6506 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
6507 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
6508 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
6509 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
6510 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
6511 to argue its side.</p>
6512
6513 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
6514 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
6515 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
6516 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
6517
6518 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
6519 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
6520 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
6521
6522       </div>
6523       <div class="tags">
6524
6525
6526         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>.
6527
6528
6529       </div>
6530     </div>
6531     <div class="padding"></div>
6532
6533     <div class="entry">
6534       <div class="title">
6535         <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>
6536       </div>
6537       <div class="date">
6538          3rd October 2012
6539       </div>
6540       <div class="body">
6541         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
6542 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
6543 the computer science book collection available in his local
6544 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
6545 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
6546 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
6547 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
6548 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
6549 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
6550 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
6551 recently published books.</p>
6552
6553 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
6554 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
6555 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
6556 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
6557 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
6558 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
6559 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
6560 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
6561 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
6562 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
6563 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
6564 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
6565 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
6566 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
6567 for the library that evening.</p>
6568
6569 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
6570 going to know that for example
6571 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
6572 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
6573 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
6574 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
6575 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
6576 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
6577 book right away.</p>
6578
6579       </div>
6580       <div class="tags">
6581
6582
6583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6584
6585
6586       </div>
6587     </div>
6588     <div class="padding"></div>
6589
6590     <div class="entry">
6591       <div class="title">
6592         <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>
6593       </div>
6594       <div class="date">
6595         23rd September 2012
6596       </div>
6597       <div class="body">
6598         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
6599 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
6600 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6601 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
6602 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
6603 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
6604
6605 When I started, I
6606 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6607 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
6608 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
6609 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
6610 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
6611 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
6612 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
6613
6614 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6615
6616 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
6617 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
6618 the project files currently available from
6619 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6620
6621 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6622 the updated
6623 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6624 and
6625 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6626 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6627 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6628 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6629
6630       </div>
6631       <div class="tags">
6632
6633
6634         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>.
6635
6636
6637       </div>
6638     </div>
6639     <div class="padding"></div>
6640
6641     <div class="entry">
6642       <div class="title">
6643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
6644       </div>
6645       <div class="date">
6646         17th September 2012
6647       </div>
6648       <div class="body">
6649         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
6650 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6651 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
6652 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
6653 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
6654 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
6655 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
6656
6657 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6658
6659 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
6660 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
6661 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
6662 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
6663 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
6664 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
6665 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
6666 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
6667 training is anyway very important</p>
6668
6669 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
6670 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
6671 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
6672 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
6673 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
6674
6675 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6676 project?</strong></p>
6677
6678 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
6679 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
6680 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
6681 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
6682 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
6683 hole.</p>
6684
6685 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6686 Edu?</strong></p>
6687
6688 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
6689 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
6690 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
6691 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
6692 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
6693 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
6694 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
6695 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
6696 hassle.</p>
6697
6698 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6699 Edu?</strong></p>
6700
6701 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
6702 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
6703 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
6704 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
6705 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
6706 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
6707 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
6708 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
6709
6710 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6711
6712 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
6713 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
6714 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
6715 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
6716 has the same...</p>
6717
6718 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
6719 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
6720 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
6721 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
6722
6723 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6724 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6725
6726 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
6727 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
6728 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
6729
6730 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
6731 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
6732 don't.</p>
6733
6734 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
6735 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
6736 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
6737 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
6738 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
6739 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
6740 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
6741
6742       </div>
6743       <div class="tags">
6744
6745
6746         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>.
6747
6748
6749       </div>
6750     </div>
6751     <div class="padding"></div>
6752
6753     <div class="entry">
6754       <div class="title">
6755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
6756       </div>
6757       <div class="date">
6758         15th September 2012
6759       </div>
6760       <div class="body">
6761         <p>After the
6762 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
6763 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
6764 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
6765 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
6766 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
6767 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
6768 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
6769 was
6770 <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
6771 formal working group should be formed.</p>
6772
6773 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
6774 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
6775 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
6776 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
6777 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
6778 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
6779 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
6780 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
6781
6782 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
6783 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
6784 IETF.</p>
6785
6786       </div>
6787       <div class="tags">
6788
6789
6790         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>.
6791
6792
6793       </div>
6794     </div>
6795     <div class="padding"></div>
6796
6797     <div class="entry">
6798       <div class="title">
6799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
6800       </div>
6801       <div class="date">
6802         12th September 2012
6803       </div>
6804       <div class="body">
6805         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
6806 publication of of
6807 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
6808 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
6809 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
6810 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
6811 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
6812 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
6813 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
6814 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
6815 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
6816 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
6817
6818 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
6819 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
6820 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
6821 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
6822
6823 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
6824 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
6825
6826       </div>
6827       <div class="tags">
6828
6829
6830         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>.
6831
6832
6833       </div>
6834     </div>
6835     <div class="padding"></div>
6836
6837     <div class="entry">
6838       <div class="title">
6839         <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>
6840       </div>
6841       <div class="date">
6842          7th September 2012
6843       </div>
6844       <div class="body">
6845         <p>As I
6846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
6847 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
6848 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
6849 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
6850 repository for the project</a>.</p>
6851
6852 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6853 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6854 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6855 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
6856
6857 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6858 PostScript formats at
6859 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6860 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
6861
6862       </div>
6863       <div class="tags">
6864
6865
6866         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>.
6867
6868
6869       </div>
6870     </div>
6871     <div class="padding"></div>
6872
6873     <div class="entry">
6874       <div class="title">
6875         <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>
6876       </div>
6877       <div class="date">
6878         23rd August 2012
6879       </div>
6880       <div class="body">
6881         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
6882 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
6883 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
6884 revisit the great site
6885 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
6886 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
6887 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
6888
6889       </div>
6890       <div class="tags">
6891
6892
6893         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>.
6894
6895
6896       </div>
6897     </div>
6898     <div class="padding"></div>
6899
6900     <div class="entry">
6901       <div class="title">
6902         <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>
6903       </div>
6904       <div class="date">
6905         17th August 2012
6906       </div>
6907       <div class="body">
6908         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
6909 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6910 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6911 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
6912 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
6913 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
6914 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
6915 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
6916 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
6917 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
6918 summer I
6919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6920 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
6921 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
6922
6923 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
6924 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
6925 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
6926 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
6927 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
6928 progress:</p>
6929
6930 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6931
6932 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
6933 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
6934 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
6935 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
6936 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
6937 english version of the docbook source.</p>
6938
6939 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6940 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6941 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6942 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6943 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6944 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
6945 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
6946 project files currently available from <a
6947 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6948
6949 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6950 the updated
6951 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6952 and
6953 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6954 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6955 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6956 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6957
6958       </div>
6959       <div class="tags">
6960
6961
6962         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>.
6963
6964
6965       </div>
6966     </div>
6967     <div class="padding"></div>
6968
6969     <div class="entry">
6970       <div class="title">
6971         <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>
6972       </div>
6973       <div class="date">
6974         10th August 2012
6975       </div>
6976       <div class="body">
6977         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
6978 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
6979 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
6980 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
6981 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
6982 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
6983 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
6984 case for the language
6985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
6986 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
6987
6988 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
6989 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
6990 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
6991 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
6992 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
6993
6994 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
6995 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
6996 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
6997 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
6998 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
6999 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
7000 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
7001 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
7002 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
7003 alias for 'nb'.</p>
7004
7005 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
7006 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
7007 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
7008 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
7009 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
7010 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
7011 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
7012 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
7013 at the same time. :(</p>
7014
7015 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
7016 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
7017 processors. :(</p>
7018
7019 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
7020
7021       </div>
7022       <div class="tags">
7023
7024
7025         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>.
7026
7027
7028       </div>
7029     </div>
7030     <div class="padding"></div>
7031
7032     <div class="entry">
7033       <div class="title">
7034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
7035       </div>
7036       <div class="date">
7037         31st July 2012
7038       </div>
7039       <div class="body">
7040         <p>I tried to send this text to the
7041 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
7042 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
7043 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
7044 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
7045 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
7046 out.</p>
7047
7048 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
7049 learning curve at the moment.</p>
7050
7051 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
7052 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
7053 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
7054 available from
7055 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
7056 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
7057 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
7058 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
7059 Squeeze.</p>
7060
7061 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
7062 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
7063 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
7064 problems.</p>
7065
7066 <ul>
7067
7068 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
7069    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
7070    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
7071    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
7072    index references spanning several pages (See
7073    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
7074    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
7075    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
7076
7077 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
7078    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
7079    #683163</a>).</li>
7080
7081 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
7082    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
7083    footnote and text body, see
7084    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
7085    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
7086    refs listed are not right).</li>
7087
7088 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
7089
7090 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
7091    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
7092
7093 </ul>
7094
7095 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
7096 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
7097 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
7098
7099 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
7100
7101       </div>
7102       <div class="tags">
7103
7104
7105         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>.
7106
7107
7108       </div>
7109     </div>
7110     <div class="padding"></div>
7111
7112     <div class="entry">
7113       <div class="title">
7114         <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>
7115       </div>
7116       <div class="date">
7117         21st July 2012
7118       </div>
7119       <div class="body">
7120         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
7121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
7122 norwegian version</a> of the book
7123 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
7124 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
7125 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
7126 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
7127 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7128
7129 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
7130 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
7131 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
7132 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
7133 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
7134 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
7135 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
7136 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
7137 print. :)</p>
7138
7139 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
7140 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
7141 language.</p>
7142
7143       </div>
7144       <div class="tags">
7145
7146
7147         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>.
7148
7149
7150       </div>
7151     </div>
7152     <div class="padding"></div>
7153
7154     <div class="entry">
7155       <div class="title">
7156         <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>
7157       </div>
7158       <div class="date">
7159         16th July 2012
7160       </div>
7161       <div class="body">
7162         <p>I am currently working on a
7163 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
7164 to translate</a> the book
7165 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
7166 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
7167 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
7168 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
7169 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
7170 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
7171 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7172
7173 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
7174 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
7175 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
7176 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
7177 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
7178 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
7179 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
7180 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
7181 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
7182
7183       </div>
7184       <div class="tags">
7185
7186
7187         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>.
7188
7189
7190       </div>
7191     </div>
7192     <div class="padding"></div>
7193
7194     <div class="entry">
7195       <div class="title">
7196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
7197       </div>
7198       <div class="date">
7199          9th July 2012
7200       </div>
7201       <div class="body">
7202         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7203 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
7204 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
7205 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
7206 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
7207 to adjust and scale the just released
7208 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7209 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
7210 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
7211
7212 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7213
7214 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
7215 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
7216 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
7217 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
7218 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
7219 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
7220 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
7221 perspective when working with IT.</p>
7222
7223 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7224 project?</strong></p>
7225
7226 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
7227 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
7228 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
7229 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
7230 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
7231 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
7232
7233 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7234 Edu?</strong></p>
7235
7236 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
7237 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
7238 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
7239 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
7240 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
7241 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
7242 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
7243 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
7244 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
7245 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
7246 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
7247 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
7248 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
7249 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
7250 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
7251 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
7252 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
7253 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
7254 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
7255 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
7256 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
7257 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
7258 quicker to update.
7259
7260 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7261 Edu?</strong></p>
7262
7263 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
7264 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
7265 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
7266 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
7267 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
7268 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
7269
7270 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
7271 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
7272 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
7273 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
7274 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
7275 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
7276 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
7277 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
7278 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
7279 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
7280 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
7281 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
7282 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
7283 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
7284 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
7285
7286 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
7287 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
7288 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
7289 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
7290 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
7291 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
7292 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
7293 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
7294
7295 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
7296 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
7297 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
7298 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
7299 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
7300 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
7301 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
7302 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
7303 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
7304 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
7305 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
7306 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
7307 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
7308 sound file.</p>
7309
7310 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
7311 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
7312 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
7313 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
7314 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
7315 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
7316 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
7317 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
7318 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
7319
7320 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7321
7322 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
7323 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
7324 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
7325 )</p>
7326
7327 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7328 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7329
7330 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
7331 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
7332 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
7333 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
7334 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
7335 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
7336 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
7337 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
7338 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
7339 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
7340 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
7341 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
7342 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
7343 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
7344 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
7345
7346 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
7347 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
7348 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
7349 management with Airtime</a>,
7350 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
7351 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
7352 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
7353 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
7354 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
7355
7356       </div>
7357       <div class="tags">
7358
7359
7360         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>.
7361
7362
7363       </div>
7364     </div>
7365     <div class="padding"></div>
7366
7367     <div class="entry">
7368       <div class="title">
7369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
7370       </div>
7371       <div class="date">
7372          8th July 2012
7373       </div>
7374       <div class="body">
7375         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
7376 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
7377 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
7378 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
7379 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
7380 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
7381 Steinberg in his blog post
7382 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
7383 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
7384 spending of your tax money.</p>
7385
7386 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
7387 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
7388 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
7389 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
7390 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
7391 purchases.</p>
7392
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="tags">
7395
7396
7397         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>.
7398
7399
7400       </div>
7401     </div>
7402     <div class="padding"></div>
7403
7404     <div class="entry">
7405       <div class="title">
7406         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
7407       </div>
7408       <div class="date">
7409          7th July 2012
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="body">
7412         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7413 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
7414 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
7415 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
7416 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
7417 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
7418 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
7419 receive.  The software is
7420
7421 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
7422 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
7423 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
7424 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
7425 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
7426 Windows</a>.</p>
7427
7428 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
7429 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
7430
7431 <p><ul>
7432
7433   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
7434     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
7435
7436   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
7437     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
7438     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
7439     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
7440     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
7441     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
7442     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
7443     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
7444     </li>
7445
7446   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
7447     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
7448
7449   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
7450     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
7451
7452   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
7453     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
7454
7455   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
7456
7457   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
7458     formats </li>
7459
7460   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
7461     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
7462     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
7463     (as separate sets)</li>
7464
7465   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
7466     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
7467     percentage)</li>
7468
7469   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
7470     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
7471     memory):
7472     <ul>
7473       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
7474       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
7475       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
7476       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
7477       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
7478       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
7479       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
7480       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
7481       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
7482       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
7483           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
7484           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
7485           activity)</li>
7486       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
7487       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
7488     </ul></li>
7489
7490   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
7491     <ul>
7492       <li>Break periods</li>
7493       <li>For teacher(s):
7494         <ul>
7495           <li>Not available periods</li>
7496           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
7497           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7498           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7499           <li>Min hours daily</li>
7500           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7501
7502           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7503             days per week</li>
7504         </ul></li>
7505       <li>For students (sets):
7506         <ul>
7507           <li>Not available periods</li>
7508           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
7509           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
7510           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
7511           <li>Min hours daily</li>
7512           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
7513
7514           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
7515             days per week</li>
7516         </ul></li>
7517       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
7518         <ul>
7519           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
7520           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
7521           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
7522           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
7523           <li>End(s) students day</li>
7524           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
7525           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
7526             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
7527           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
7528           <li>Not overlapping</li>
7529           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
7530           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
7531         </ul></li>
7532     </ul></li>
7533
7534   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
7535     <ul>
7536       <li>Room not available periods</li>
7537       <li>For teacher(s):
7538         <ul>
7539           <li>Home room(s)</li>
7540           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7541           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7542         </ul>
7543       </li>
7544
7545       <li>For students (sets):
7546         <ul>
7547           <li>Home room(s)</li>
7548           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7549           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7550         </ul>
7551       </li>
7552       <li>Preferred room(s):
7553         <ul>
7554           <li>For a subject</li>
7555           <li>For an activity tag</li>
7556           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
7557           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
7558         </ul>
7559       </li>
7560
7561       <li>For a set of activities:
7562         <ul>
7563           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
7564         </ul>
7565       </li>
7566     </ul>
7567   </li>
7568 </ul></p>
7569
7570 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
7571 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
7572 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
7573 manually, check it out.
7574
7575 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
7576 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
7577 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
7578 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
7579 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
7580 section</a>.</p>
7581
7582       </div>
7583       <div class="tags">
7584
7585
7586         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>.
7587
7588
7589       </div>
7590     </div>
7591     <div class="padding"></div>
7592
7593     <div class="entry">
7594       <div class="title">
7595         <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>
7596       </div>
7597       <div class="date">
7598          3rd July 2012
7599       </div>
7600       <div class="body">
7601         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
7602 project (Norwegian version of
7603 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
7604 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
7605 a problem with the municipalities using
7606 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
7607 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
7608 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
7609 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
7610 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
7611 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
7612 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
7613 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
7614 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
7615 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
7616 the From: header.</p>
7617
7618 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
7619 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
7620 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
7621 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
7622 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
7623 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
7624 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
7625 behaviour.</p>
7626
7627 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
7628 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
7629 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
7630 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
7631 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
7632 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7633 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
7634
7635       </div>
7636       <div class="tags">
7637
7638
7639         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>.
7640
7641
7642       </div>
7643     </div>
7644     <div class="padding"></div>
7645
7646     <div class="entry">
7647       <div class="title">
7648         <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>
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="date">
7651         26th June 2012
7652       </div>
7653       <div class="body">
7654         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
7655 another interview with the people behind
7656 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
7657 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
7658 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
7659 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
7660 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
7661 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7662 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7663
7664 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7665
7666 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
7667 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
7668 ICT in schools</p>
7669
7670 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7671 project?</strong></p>
7672
7673 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
7674 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
7675 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
7676 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
7677
7678 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7679 Edu?</strong></p>
7680
7681 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
7682 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
7683 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
7684 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
7685
7686 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7687 Edu?</strong></p>
7688
7689 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
7690 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
7691 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
7692 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
7693 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
7694 technologies in school.</p>
7695
7696 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7697
7698 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
7699 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
7700 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
7701
7702 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7703 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7704
7705 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
7706 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
7707 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
7708 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
7709
7710 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
7711 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
7712 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
7713
7714 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
7715 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
7716 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
7717 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
7718 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
7719 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
7720 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
7721 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
7722 working there.</p>
7723
7724       </div>
7725       <div class="tags">
7726
7727
7728         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>.
7729
7730
7731       </div>
7732     </div>
7733     <div class="padding"></div>
7734
7735     <div class="entry">
7736       <div class="title">
7737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7738       </div>
7739       <div class="date">
7740         24th June 2012
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="body">
7743         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7744 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7745 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7746 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7747 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7748 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7749 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7750 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7751 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7752 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7753 missing in my book.</p>
7754
7755 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7756 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7757 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7758 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7759 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7760 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7761 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7762
7763       </div>
7764       <div class="tags">
7765
7766
7767         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>.
7768
7769
7770       </div>
7771     </div>
7772     <div class="padding"></div>
7773
7774     <div class="entry">
7775       <div class="title">
7776         <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>
7777       </div>
7778       <div class="date">
7779         11th June 2012
7780       </div>
7781       <div class="body">
7782         <p>During my work on
7783 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
7784 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
7785 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
7786 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
7787 explanation.</p>
7788
7789 <p><ul>
7790
7791 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
7792 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
7793 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
7794 system depend on tasksel tasks in
7795 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
7796 installation.</li>
7797
7798 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
7799 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
7800 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
7801 at least try to enable it for these services:
7802 <ul>
7803
7804   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
7805     quotas.</li>
7806   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
7807   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
7808   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
7809   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
7810   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
7811
7812 </ul></li>
7813
7814 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
7815 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
7816 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
7817 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
7818
7819 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
7820 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
7821 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
7822
7823 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
7824 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
7825 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
7826 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
7827 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
7828 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
7829
7830 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
7831 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
7832 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
7833 in Wheezy.
7834
7835 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
7836 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
7837 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
7838
7839 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
7840 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
7841 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
7842 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
7843
7844 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
7845 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
7846 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
7847 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
7848
7849 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
7850 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
7851 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
7852
7853 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
7854 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
7855 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
7856
7857 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
7858 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
7859 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
7860 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
7861 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
7862
7863 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
7864 <ul>
7865
7866 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
7867 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
7868 <li>and probably more?</li>
7869 </ul></li>
7870
7871 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
7872 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
7873 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
7874 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
7875 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
7876 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
7877 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
7878 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
7879
7880
7881 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
7882 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
7883 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
7884 use.</li>
7885
7886 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
7887 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
7888 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
7889 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
7890 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
7891
7892 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
7893 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
7894 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
7895 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
7896 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
7897 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
7898
7899 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
7900 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
7901 There are at least three implementations,
7902 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
7903 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
7904 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
7905 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
7906 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
7907 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
7908 given room.</li>
7909
7910 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
7911 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
7912 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
7913 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
7914 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
7915 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
7916 investigated.</li>
7917
7918 </ul></p>
7919
7920 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
7921 version.</p>
7922
7923       </div>
7924       <div class="tags">
7925
7926
7927         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>.
7928
7929
7930       </div>
7931     </div>
7932     <div class="padding"></div>
7933
7934     <div class="entry">
7935       <div class="title">
7936         <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>
7937       </div>
7938       <div class="date">
7939          9th June 2012
7940       </div>
7941       <div class="body">
7942         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
7943 <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
7944 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
7945 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
7946 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
7947 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
7948 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
7949 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
7950 be willing to pay for.</p>
7951
7952 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
7953 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
7954 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
7955 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
7956 Orwell</a>.</p>
7957
7958       </div>
7959       <div class="tags">
7960
7961
7962         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>.
7963
7964
7965       </div>
7966     </div>
7967     <div class="padding"></div>
7968
7969     <div class="entry">
7970       <div class="title">
7971         <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>
7972       </div>
7973       <div class="date">
7974          6th June 2012
7975       </div>
7976       <div class="body">
7977         <p>A few days ago
7978 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
7979 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
7980 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
7981 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
7982 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
7983 code for HP, Dell and IBM
7984 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
7985 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
7986 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
7987 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
7988 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
7989
7990 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
7991 output:
7992
7993 <blockquote><pre>
7994 % 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>
7995 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": ""})
7996 %
7997 </pre></blockquote>
7998
7999 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
8000 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
8001 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
8002
8003       </div>
8004       <div class="tags">
8005
8006
8007         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>.
8008
8009
8010       </div>
8011     </div>
8012     <div class="padding"></div>
8013
8014     <div class="entry">
8015       <div class="title">
8016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="date">
8019          2nd June 2012
8020       </div>
8021       <div class="body">
8022         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
8023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8024 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
8025 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
8026 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8027 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8028
8029 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8030
8031 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
8032 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
8033 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
8034 by Angela).</p>
8035
8036 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
8037 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
8038 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
8039 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
8040 becoming an osteopath.</p>
8041
8042 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
8043 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
8044 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
8045 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
8046 skills with communication skills.</p>
8047
8048 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8049 project?</strong></p>
8050
8051 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
8052 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
8053 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
8054 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
8055 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
8056
8057 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
8058 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
8059 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
8060 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
8061 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
8062 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
8063 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
8064 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
8065 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
8066
8067 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
8068 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
8069 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
8070
8071 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
8072
8073 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
8074 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
8075 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
8076 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
8077 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
8078 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
8079 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
8080 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
8081 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
8082 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
8083 point.</p>
8084
8085 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
8086 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
8087 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
8088 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
8089 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
8090 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
8091
8092 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
8093 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
8094 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
8095 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
8096 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
8097 spare time.</p>
8098
8099 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
8100 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
8101 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
8102 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
8103 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
8104
8105 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
8106 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
8107 avoidance do exist.</p>
8108
8109 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
8110 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
8111 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
8112 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
8113 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
8114 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
8115 and probably a gain for all.</p>
8116
8117 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8118 Edu?</strong></p>
8119
8120 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
8121 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
8122 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
8123 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
8124 project communication, honest communication within the group of
8125 developers, etc.</p>
8126
8127 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8128 Edu?</strong></p>
8129
8130 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
8131
8132 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
8133 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
8134 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
8135 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
8136 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
8137 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
8138 contribute).</p>
8139
8140 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
8141 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
8142 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
8143 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
8144 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
8145 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
8146 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
8147 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
8148 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
8149 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
8150
8151 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8152
8153 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
8154
8155 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
8156 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
8157 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
8158
8159 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
8160 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
8161 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
8162 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
8163
8164 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
8165 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
8166 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
8167 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
8168 whiteboard.</p>
8169
8170 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
8171
8172 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8173 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8174
8175 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
8176 enrol people.</p>
8177
8178       </div>
8179       <div class="tags">
8180
8181
8182         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>.
8183
8184
8185       </div>
8186     </div>
8187     <div class="padding"></div>
8188
8189     <div class="entry">
8190       <div class="title">
8191         <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>
8192       </div>
8193       <div class="date">
8194          1st June 2012
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="body">
8197         <p>A few years ago I wrote
8198 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
8199 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
8200 I have learned from colleges here at the
8201 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
8202 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
8203 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
8204 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
8205 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
8206
8207 <p><pre>
8208 use strict;
8209 use warnings;
8210 use SOAP::Lite;
8211 use Data::Dumper;
8212 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
8213 my $App = 'test';
8214 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
8215 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
8216 my $s = SOAP::Lite
8217     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
8218     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
8219     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
8220     ;
8221 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
8222     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
8223     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
8224     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
8225 );
8226 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
8227 </pre></p>
8228
8229 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
8230
8231 <p><pre>
8232 $VAR1 = {
8233           'Asset' => {
8234                      'Entitlements' => {
8235                                        'EntitlementData' => [
8236                                                             {
8237                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8238                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
8239                                                               'Provider' => '',
8240                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8241                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8242                                                             },
8243                                                             {
8244                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8245                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
8246                                                               'Provider' => '',
8247                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8248                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8249                                                             },
8250                                                             {
8251                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
8252                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
8253                                                               'Provider' => '',
8254                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
8255                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
8256                                                             }
8257                                                           ]
8258                                      },
8259                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
8260                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
8261                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
8262                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
8263                                           'Buid' => '2323',
8264                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
8265                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
8266                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
8267                                         }
8268                    }
8269         };
8270 </pre></p>
8271
8272 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
8273 service outside the
8274 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
8275 documentation</a>, and according to
8276 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
8277 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
8278 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
8279
8280 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
8281 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
8282
8283       </div>
8284       <div class="tags">
8285
8286
8287         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>.
8288
8289
8290       </div>
8291     </div>
8292     <div class="padding"></div>
8293
8294     <div class="entry">
8295       <div class="title">
8296         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
8297       </div>
8298       <div class="date">
8299         31st May 2012
8300       </div>
8301       <div class="body">
8302         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
8303 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
8304 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
8305 running Debian Squeeze, where
8306 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
8307 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
8308 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
8309 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
8310 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
8311 another day.</p>
8312
8313 <p>After calibration, I get a
8314 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
8315 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
8316 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
8317 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
8318 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
8319 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
8320 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
8321 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
8322 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
8323 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
8324 and a simple</p>
8325
8326 <p><pre>
8327 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
8328 </pre></p>
8329
8330 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
8331 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
8332 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
8333 enough for now.</p>
8334
8335       </div>
8336       <div class="tags">
8337
8338
8339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8340
8341
8342       </div>
8343     </div>
8344     <div class="padding"></div>
8345
8346     <div class="entry">
8347       <div class="title">
8348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
8349       </div>
8350       <div class="date">
8351         27th May 2012
8352       </div>
8353       <div class="body">
8354         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
8355 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8356 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
8357 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
8358 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
8359 since then, helping to make sure the
8360 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8361 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
8362
8363 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8364
8365 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
8366 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
8367 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
8368 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
8369 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
8370 our computer network.</p>
8371
8372 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
8373 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
8374 (4 months).</p>
8375
8376 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8377 project?</strong></p>
8378
8379 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
8380 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
8381 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
8382 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
8383 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
8384 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
8385 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
8386 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
8387 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
8388 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
8389 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
8390 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
8391 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
8392 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
8393
8394 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8395 Edu?</strong></p>
8396
8397 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
8398 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
8399 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
8400 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
8401 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
8402 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
8403 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
8404 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
8405
8406 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8407 Edu?</strong></p>
8408
8409 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
8410 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
8411 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
8412 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
8413 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
8414 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
8415 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
8416 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
8417 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
8418 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
8419 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
8420 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
8421
8422 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8423
8424 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
8425 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
8426 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
8427
8428 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8429 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8430
8431 <p><ol>
8432
8433 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
8434 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
8435 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
8436 developing.</li>
8437
8438 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
8439 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
8440 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
8441 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
8442 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
8443
8444 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
8445 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
8446 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
8447
8448 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
8449 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
8450 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
8451 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
8452
8453 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
8454 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
8455 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
8456
8457 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
8458
8459 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
8460 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
8461 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
8462 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
8463
8464 </ol></p>
8465
8466       </div>
8467       <div class="tags">
8468
8469
8470         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>.
8471
8472
8473       </div>
8474     </div>
8475     <div class="padding"></div>
8476
8477     <div class="entry">
8478       <div class="title">
8479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
8480       </div>
8481       <div class="date">
8482         26th May 2012
8483       </div>
8484       <div class="body">
8485         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
8486 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
8487 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
8488 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
8489 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
8490
8491 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
8492 <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>
8493 comment:</p>
8494
8495 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
8496 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
8497 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
8498 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
8499 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
8500 </blockquote></p>
8501
8502 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
8503 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
8504 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
8505 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
8506 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
8507 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
8508 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
8509 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
8510 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
8511 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
8512 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
8513 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
8514 of wasted effort.</p>
8515
8516 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
8517 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
8518 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
8519
8520 <p>See
8521 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
8522 and
8523 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
8524 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
8525 </blockquote></p>
8526
8527       </div>
8528       <div class="tags">
8529
8530
8531         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>.
8532
8533
8534       </div>
8535     </div>
8536     <div class="padding"></div>
8537
8538     <div class="entry">
8539       <div class="title">
8540         <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>
8541       </div>
8542       <div class="date">
8543         18th May 2012
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="body">
8546         <p>In january, I
8547 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
8548 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
8549 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
8550 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
8551 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
8552 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
8553 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
8554 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
8555 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
8556 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
8557
8558 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
8559 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
8560 drivers. :)</p>
8561
8562       </div>
8563       <div class="tags">
8564
8565
8566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8567
8568
8569       </div>
8570     </div>
8571     <div class="padding"></div>
8572
8573     <div class="entry">
8574       <div class="title">
8575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
8576       </div>
8577       <div class="date">
8578         13th May 2012
8579       </div>
8580       <div class="body">
8581         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
8582 publish another interview with the people behind
8583 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8584 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
8585 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
8586 details get right before release.
8587
8588 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8589
8590 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
8591 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
8592 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
8593 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
8594 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
8595 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
8596 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
8597 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
8598
8599 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
8600 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
8601 home since 2006.</p>
8602
8603 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8604 project?</strong></p>
8605
8606 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
8607 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
8608 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
8609 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
8610 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
8611 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
8612
8613 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
8614 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
8615 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
8616 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
8617 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
8618 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
8619 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
8620 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
8621 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
8622 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
8623 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
8624 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
8625 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
8626 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
8627 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
8628 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
8629
8630 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8631 Edu?</strong></p>
8632
8633 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
8634 for me as today.</p>
8635
8636 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
8637
8638 <p><ul>
8639
8640 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
8641 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
8642
8643 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
8644 cost.</li>
8645
8646 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
8647 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
8648 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
8649 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
8650 server</li>
8651
8652 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
8653 school.</li>
8654
8655 </ul></p>
8656
8657 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
8658 came up in this way:</p>
8659
8660 <p><ul>
8661
8662 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
8663 now.</li>
8664
8665 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
8666 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
8667 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
8668
8669 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
8670 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
8671 interfaces used in the past.</li>
8672
8673 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
8674 different needs.</li>
8675
8676 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
8677
8678 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
8679 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
8680 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
8681
8682 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
8683 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
8684
8685 </ul></p>
8686
8687 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8688 Edu?</strong></p>
8689
8690 <p><ul>
8691
8692 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
8693 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
8694 whole municipality areas.</li>
8695
8696 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
8697 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
8698 politicians.</li>
8699
8700 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
8701
8702 </ul></p>
8703
8704 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8705
8706 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
8707 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
8708 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
8709 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
8710 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
8711 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
8712
8713 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
8714 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
8715 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
8716 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
8717 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
8718
8719 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8720 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8721
8722 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
8723 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
8724 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
8725
8726       </div>
8727       <div class="tags">
8728
8729
8730         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>.
8731
8732
8733       </div>
8734     </div>
8735     <div class="padding"></div>
8736
8737     <div class="entry">
8738       <div class="title">
8739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="date">
8742         30th April 2012
8743       </div>
8744       <div class="body">
8745         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
8746 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
8747
8748 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
8749 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
8750 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
8751 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
8752 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
8753 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
8754 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
8755 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
8756 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
8757 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
8758 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
8759 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
8760 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
8761 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
8762 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
8763 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
8764
8765 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
8766 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
8767 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
8768 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
8769 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
8770 finally found a Danish supplier
8771 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
8772 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
8773 days ago.</p>
8774
8775 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
8776 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
8777 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
8778 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
8779 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
8780 toys.</p>
8781
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="tags">
8784
8785
8786         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8787
8788
8789       </div>
8790     </div>
8791     <div class="padding"></div>
8792
8793     <div class="entry">
8794       <div class="title">
8795         <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>
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="date">
8798         26th April 2012
8799       </div>
8800       <div class="body">
8801         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
8802 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
8803 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
8804 that the video editor application included with
8805 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
8806 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
8807 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
8808
8809 <p><blockquote>
8810 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
8811 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
8812 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
8813 </blockquote></p>
8814
8815 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
8816
8817 <p><blockquote>
8818 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
8819 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
8820 </blockquote></p>
8821
8822 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
8823 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
8824 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
8825 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
8826 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
8827 video.  AMR is
8828 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
8829 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
8830 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
8831 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
8832 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
8833 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
8834 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
8835
8836 <p>I know why I prefer
8837 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
8838 standards</a> also for video.</p>
8839
8840       </div>
8841       <div class="tags">
8842
8843
8844         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>.
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/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
8854       </div>
8855       <div class="date">
8856         19th April 2012
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="body">
8859         <p>Here in Norway, the
8860 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
8861 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
8862 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
8863 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
8864 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
8865 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
8866 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
8867 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
8868 on the same level.</p>
8869
8870 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
8871 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
8872 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
8873 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
8874 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
8875 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
8876 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
8877 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
8878 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
8879 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
8880 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
8881 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
8882 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
8883 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
8884 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
8885 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
8886 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
8887 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
8888
8889 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
8890 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
8891 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
8892 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
8893 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
8894 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
8895 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
8896 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
8897
8898 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
8899 from Simon Phipps
8900 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
8901 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
8902
8903 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
8904 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
8905 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
8906 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
8907 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
8908 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
8909 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
8910 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
8911 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
8912
8913       </div>
8914       <div class="tags">
8915
8916
8917         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>.
8918
8919
8920       </div>
8921     </div>
8922     <div class="padding"></div>
8923
8924     <div class="entry">
8925       <div class="title">
8926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
8927       </div>
8928       <div class="date">
8929         15th April 2012
8930       </div>
8931       <div class="body">
8932         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8933 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
8934 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
8935 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
8936 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
8937 up in the recently released
8938 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8939 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8940
8941 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8942
8943 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
8944 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
8945 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
8946 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
8947 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
8948 information technology and science/technology.</p>
8949
8950 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8951 project?</strong></p>
8952
8953 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
8954 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
8955 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
8956 contributing.</p>
8957
8958 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8959 Edu?</strong></p>
8960
8961 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
8962 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
8963 Debian Project!</p>
8964
8965 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8966 Edu?</strong></p>
8967
8968 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
8969 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
8970 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
8971 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
8972 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
8973 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
8974 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
8975
8976 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
8977 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
8978
8979 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8980
8981 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
8982 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
8983 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
8984 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
8985
8986 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8987 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8988
8989 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
8990 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
8991 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
8992 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
8993 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
8994 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
8995 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
8996
8997 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
8998 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
8999 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
9000 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
9001 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
9002 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
9003 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
9004 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
9005
9006       </div>
9007       <div class="tags">
9008
9009
9010         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>.
9011
9012
9013       </div>
9014     </div>
9015     <div class="padding"></div>
9016
9017     <div class="entry">
9018       <div class="title">
9019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
9020       </div>
9021       <div class="date">
9022          8th April 2012
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="body">
9025         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
9026 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
9027 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
9028 contributor to the
9029 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
9030 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
9031
9032 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9033
9034 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
9035 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
9036
9037 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9038 project?</strong></p>
9039
9040 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
9041 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
9042 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
9043 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
9044 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
9045 "localisation".</p>
9046
9047 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9048 Edu?</strong></p>
9049
9050 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9051 Edu?</strong></p>
9052
9053 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
9054 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
9055 education system.</p>
9056
9057 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
9058 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
9059 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
9060 money on the latest hardware.</p>
9061
9062 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9063
9064 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
9065 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
9066 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
9067
9068 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9069 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9070
9071 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
9072 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
9073 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
9074
9075       </div>
9076       <div class="tags">
9077
9078
9079         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>.
9080
9081
9082       </div>
9083     </div>
9084     <div class="padding"></div>
9085
9086     <div class="entry">
9087       <div class="title">
9088         <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>
9089       </div>
9090       <div class="date">
9091          6th April 2012
9092       </div>
9093       <div class="body">
9094         <p>Recently I have spent time with
9095 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
9096 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9097 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
9098 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
9099 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
9100 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
9101 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
9102 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
9103
9104 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
9105 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
9106 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
9107 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
9108 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
9109 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
9110 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
9111 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
9112
9113 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
9114 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
9115 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
9116 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
9117 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
9118 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
9119 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
9120 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
9121
9122 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
9123 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
9124 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
9125 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
9126 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
9127 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
9128 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
9129 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
9130 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
9131 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
9132
9133 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
9134 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
9135 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
9136 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
9137
9138 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
9139 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
9140
9141       </div>
9142       <div class="tags">
9143
9144
9145         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>.
9146
9147
9148       </div>
9149     </div>
9150     <div class="padding"></div>
9151
9152     <div class="entry">
9153       <div class="title">
9154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
9155       </div>
9156       <div class="date">
9157          5th April 2012
9158       </div>
9159       <div class="body">
9160         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
9161 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
9162 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
9163 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
9164 for schools.  Check out his article
9165 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
9166 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
9167
9168       </div>
9169       <div class="tags">
9170
9171
9172         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>.
9173
9174
9175       </div>
9176     </div>
9177     <div class="padding"></div>
9178
9179     <div class="entry">
9180       <div class="title">
9181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
9182       </div>
9183       <div class="date">
9184          1st April 2012
9185       </div>
9186       <div class="body">
9187         <p>Germany is a core area for the
9188 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9189 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
9190 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
9191
9192 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9193
9194 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
9195 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
9196 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
9197 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
9198 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
9199 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
9200 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
9201 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
9202
9203 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
9204 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
9205 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
9206 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
9207 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
9208 the end of April this year.</p>
9209
9210 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9211 project?</strong></p>
9212
9213 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
9214 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
9215 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
9216 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
9217 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
9218 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
9219 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
9220 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
9221 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
9222 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
9223 Skolelinux.</p>
9224
9225 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
9226 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
9227 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
9228 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
9229 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
9230 the admin teachers.</p>
9231
9232 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9233 Edu?</strong></p>
9234
9235 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
9236 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
9237 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
9238
9239 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
9240 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
9241 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
9242 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
9243 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
9244
9245 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9246 Edu?</strong></p>
9247
9248 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
9249
9250 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9251
9252 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
9253 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
9254 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
9255 LibreOffice.</p>
9256
9257 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9258 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9259
9260 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
9261 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
9262 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
9263
9264       </div>
9265       <div class="tags">
9266
9267
9268         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>.
9269
9270
9271       </div>
9272     </div>
9273     <div class="padding"></div>
9274
9275     <div class="entry">
9276       <div class="title">
9277         <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>
9278       </div>
9279       <div class="date">
9280         25th March 2012
9281       </div>
9282       <div class="body">
9283         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9284
9285 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
9286 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
9287 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
9288 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
9289 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
9290 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
9291 and download as a
9292 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
9293 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
9294
9295 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9296   <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"' />
9297     <p>Download video as
9298       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
9299 </video></p>
9300
9301       </div>
9302       <div class="tags">
9303
9304
9305         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>.
9306
9307
9308       </div>
9309     </div>
9310     <div class="padding"></div>
9311
9312     <div class="entry">
9313       <div class="title">
9314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
9315       </div>
9316       <div class="date">
9317         19th March 2012
9318       </div>
9319       <div class="body">
9320         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9321 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
9322 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9323 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
9324 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
9325
9326 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9327
9328 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
9329 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
9330 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
9331 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
9332 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
9333 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
9334 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
9335 installations.</p>
9336
9337 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9338 project?</strong></p>
9339
9340 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
9341 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
9342 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
9343 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
9344 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
9345 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
9346 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
9347 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
9348 these things we decided to try it.</p>
9349
9350 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9351 Edu?</strong></p>
9352
9353 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
9354 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
9355 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
9356 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
9357 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
9358 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
9359 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
9360 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
9361
9362 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9363 Edu?</strong></p>
9364
9365 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
9366 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
9367 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
9368 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
9369 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
9370
9371 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9372
9373 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
9374 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
9375 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
9376 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
9377 that counts...)</p>
9378
9379 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9380 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9381
9382 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
9383 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
9384 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
9385 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
9386 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
9387 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
9388 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
9389 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
9390 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
9391 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
9392 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
9393
9394 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
9395 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
9396 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
9397
9398       </div>
9399       <div class="tags">
9400
9401
9402         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>.
9403
9404
9405       </div>
9406     </div>
9407     <div class="padding"></div>
9408
9409     <div class="entry">
9410       <div class="title">
9411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
9412       </div>
9413       <div class="date">
9414         16th March 2012
9415       </div>
9416       <div class="body">
9417         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
9418 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
9419 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
9420 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
9421
9422 <ol>
9423
9424 <li>The documentation is written in a
9425 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
9426 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
9427 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
9428 docbook XML.</li>
9429
9430 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
9431 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
9432 with the translated text.</li>
9433
9434 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
9435 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
9436 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
9437 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
9438 images.</li>
9439
9440 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
9441 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
9442
9443 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
9444 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
9445
9446 </ol>
9447
9448 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
9449 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
9450 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
9451 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
9452 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
9453
9454 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
9455 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
9456 package</a>.</p>
9457
9458       </div>
9459       <div class="tags">
9460
9461
9462         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>.
9463
9464
9465       </div>
9466     </div>
9467     <div class="padding"></div>
9468
9469     <div class="entry">
9470       <div class="title">
9471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
9472       </div>
9473       <div class="date">
9474         11th March 2012
9475       </div>
9476       <div class="body">
9477         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
9478 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
9479 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9480 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
9481 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
9482 you have not done so already.</p>
9483
9484 <p>I plan to present the new version at
9485 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
9486 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
9487 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
9488
9489       </div>
9490       <div class="tags">
9491
9492
9493         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>.
9494
9495
9496       </div>
9497     </div>
9498     <div class="padding"></div>
9499
9500     <div class="entry">
9501       <div class="title">
9502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
9503       </div>
9504       <div class="date">
9505          9th March 2012
9506       </div>
9507       <div class="body">
9508         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
9509 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
9510 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9511 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
9512 more international audience.</p>
9513
9514 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9515 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
9516 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
9517 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
9518 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
9519 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
9520 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
9521
9522
9523 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9524
9525 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
9526 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
9527 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
9528 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
9529 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
9530 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
9531 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
9532 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
9533 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
9534 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
9535 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
9536
9537 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9538 project?</strong></p>
9539
9540 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
9541 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
9542 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
9543 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
9544 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
9545 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
9546 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
9547 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
9548 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
9549 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
9550 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
9551 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
9552 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
9553
9554 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9555 Edu?</strong></p>
9556
9557 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
9558 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
9559 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
9560 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
9561 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
9562 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
9563 Japan.</p>
9564
9565 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9566 Edu?</strong></p>
9567
9568 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
9569 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
9570 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
9571 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
9572 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
9573 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
9574 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
9575 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
9576 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
9577 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
9578 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
9579 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
9580 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
9581 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
9582 help.</p>
9583
9584 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9585
9586 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
9587 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
9588 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
9589 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
9590 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
9591 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
9592 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
9593 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
9594 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
9595 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
9596 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
9597
9598 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9599 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9600
9601 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
9602 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
9603 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
9604 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
9605 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
9606 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
9607 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
9608 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
9609 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
9610 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
9611 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
9612 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
9613
9614       </div>
9615       <div class="tags">
9616
9617
9618         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>.
9619
9620
9621       </div>
9622     </div>
9623     <div class="padding"></div>
9624
9625     <div class="entry">
9626       <div class="title">
9627         <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>
9628       </div>
9629       <div class="date">
9630          7th March 2012
9631       </div>
9632       <div class="body">
9633         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9634
9635 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
9636 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
9637 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
9638 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
9639 download as a
9640 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
9641 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
9642
9643 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9644   <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"' />
9645     <p>Download video as
9646       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
9647 </video></p>
9648
9649       </div>
9650       <div class="tags">
9651
9652
9653         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>.
9654
9655
9656       </div>
9657     </div>
9658     <div class="padding"></div>
9659
9660     <div class="entry">
9661       <div class="title">
9662         <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>
9663       </div>
9664       <div class="date">
9665          4th March 2012
9666       </div>
9667       <div class="body">
9668         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
9669 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9670 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9671 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
9672 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
9673 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9674
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="tags">
9677
9678
9679         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>.
9680
9681
9682       </div>
9683     </div>
9684     <div class="padding"></div>
9685
9686     <div class="entry">
9687       <div class="title">
9688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="date">
9691          3rd March 2012
9692       </div>
9693       <div class="body">
9694         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9695 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
9696 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
9697 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
9698 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
9699 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
9700 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
9701 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
9702 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
9703 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
9704 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
9705 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
9706 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
9707 year...</p>
9708
9709 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
9710 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
9711 name,
9712 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
9713 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
9714 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
9715 mean). I've been following
9716 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
9717 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
9718 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
9719 Check it out. :)</p>
9720
9721       </div>
9722       <div class="tags">
9723
9724
9725         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>.
9726
9727
9728       </div>
9729     </div>
9730     <div class="padding"></div>
9731
9732     <div class="entry">
9733       <div class="title">
9734         <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>
9735       </div>
9736       <div class="date">
9737         27th February 2012
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="body">
9740         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
9741 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9742 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
9743 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
9744 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
9745 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
9746 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9747
9748       </div>
9749       <div class="tags">
9750
9751
9752         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>.
9753
9754
9755       </div>
9756     </div>
9757     <div class="padding"></div>
9758
9759     <div class="entry">
9760       <div class="title">
9761         <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>
9762       </div>
9763       <div class="date">
9764         19th February 2012
9765       </div>
9766       <div class="body">
9767         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
9768 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
9769 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9770 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9771 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
9772 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
9773 solution for your school.</p>
9774
9775       </div>
9776       <div class="tags">
9777
9778
9779         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>.
9780
9781
9782       </div>
9783     </div>
9784     <div class="padding"></div>
9785
9786     <div class="entry">
9787       <div class="title">
9788         <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>
9789       </div>
9790       <div class="date">
9791         14th February 2012
9792       </div>
9793       <div class="body">
9794         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
9795 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
9796 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
9797 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
9798 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
9799 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
9800 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
9801 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
9802 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
9803
9804 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
9805 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
9806 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
9807 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
9808 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
9809
9810 <blockquote><pre>
9811 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
9812 do
9813     printf "Failed disk $d: "
9814     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
9815 done
9816 </blockquote></pre>
9817
9818 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
9819 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
9820
9821 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
9822
9823 <blockquote><pre>
9824 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9825 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9826 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
9827 </blockquote></pre>
9828
9829 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
9830 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
9831 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
9832 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
9833 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
9834 mounted inside my box.</p>
9835
9836 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
9837 Software RAID in the
9838 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
9839 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
9840 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
9841 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
9842 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
9843 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
9844
9845       </div>
9846       <div class="tags">
9847
9848
9849         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>.
9850
9851
9852       </div>
9853     </div>
9854     <div class="padding"></div>
9855
9856     <div class="entry">
9857       <div class="title">
9858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9859       </div>
9860       <div class="date">
9861         13th February 2012
9862       </div>
9863       <div class="body">
9864         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
9865 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
9866 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
9867 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
9868 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
9869 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
9870 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
9871 change the global proxy setting by editing
9872 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
9873 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
9874
9875 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
9876 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
9877 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
9878
9879 <blockquote><pre>
9880 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
9881 {
9882    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
9883        isPlainHostName(host) ||
9884        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
9885       return "DIRECT";
9886    else
9887       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
9888 }
9889 </pre></blockquote>
9890
9891 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
9892
9893 <blockquote><pre>
9894 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9895 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9896 </pre></blockquote>
9897
9898 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
9899 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
9900 would be used for
9901 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
9902 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
9903 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
9904 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
9905 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
9906 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
9907 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
9908 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
9909 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
9910 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
9911
9912 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
9913 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
9914 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
9915 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
9916 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
9917 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
9918
9919 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
9920 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
9921 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
9922 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
9923 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
9924 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
9925 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
9926 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
9927 the network setup changes.</p>
9928
9929 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
9930 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
9931 draft</a> and a
9932 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
9933 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
9934
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="tags">
9937
9938
9939         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>.
9940
9941
9942       </div>
9943     </div>
9944     <div class="padding"></div>
9945
9946     <div class="entry">
9947       <div class="title">
9948         <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>
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="date">
9951          5th February 2012
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="body">
9954         <p>Since the Lenny version of
9955 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
9956 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
9957 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
9958 in the morning.  This is done using the
9959 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
9960
9961 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
9962 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
9963 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
9964 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
9965 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
9966 the
9967 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
9968 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
9969 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
9970 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
9971 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
9972
9973 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
9974 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
9975 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
9976 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
9977 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
9978 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
9979 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
9980
9981 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
9982 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
9983 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
9984 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
9985 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
9986
9987       </div>
9988       <div class="tags">
9989
9990
9991         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>.
9992
9993
9994       </div>
9995     </div>
9996     <div class="padding"></div>
9997
9998     <div class="entry">
9999       <div class="title">
10000         <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>
10001       </div>
10002       <div class="date">
10003          4th February 2012
10004       </div>
10005       <div class="body">
10006         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
10007 publish the third beta version of
10008 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10009 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
10010 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
10011 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
10012 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10013 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
10014 on the project announcement list.</p>
10015
10016 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
10017 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
10018
10019 <ul>
10020
10021 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
10022   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
10023   the installation.</li>
10024
10025 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
10026   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
10027
10028 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
10029   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
10030   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
10031
10032 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
10033   for the local system administrator is created during installation
10034   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
10035   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
10036   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
10037   up to date on the system.</li>
10038
10039 </ul>
10040
10041 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
10042 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
10043 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
10044 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
10045
10046 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
10047 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
10048 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
10049 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
10050 will see you there?</p>
10051
10052       </div>
10053       <div class="tags">
10054
10055
10056         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>.
10057
10058
10059       </div>
10060     </div>
10061     <div class="padding"></div>
10062
10063     <div class="entry">
10064       <div class="title">
10065         <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>
10066       </div>
10067       <div class="date">
10068         27th January 2012
10069       </div>
10070       <div class="body">
10071         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
10072 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
10073 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
10074 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
10075 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
10076 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
10077 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
10078
10079 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
10080 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
10081 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
10082 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
10083 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
10084 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
10085 not taken care of by this.</p>
10086
10087 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
10088 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
10089 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
10090 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
10091 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
10092 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
10093 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
10094 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
10095 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
10096 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
10097 firmware packages.</p>
10098
10099 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
10100 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
10101 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
10102 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
10103 initrd with extra firmware, the
10104 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
10105 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
10106 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
10107
10108 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
10109 network cards working.  For this,
10110 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
10111 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
10112 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
10113
10114 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
10115 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
10116 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
10117
10118 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
10119 try.</p>
10120
10121       </div>
10122       <div class="tags">
10123
10124
10125         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>.
10126
10127
10128       </div>
10129     </div>
10130     <div class="padding"></div>
10131
10132     <div class="entry">
10133       <div class="title">
10134         <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>
10135       </div>
10136       <div class="date">
10137         25th January 2012
10138       </div>
10139       <div class="body">
10140         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
10141 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
10142 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
10143 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
10144 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
10145
10146 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
10147 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
10148 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
10149 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
10150 this is done, log on to the central server and run
10151 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
10152 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
10153 will look similar to this:</p>
10154
10155 <p><blockquote><pre>
10156 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
10157 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
10158 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.
10159
10160 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
10161
10162 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10163 enter password: *******
10164 %
10165 </pre></blockquote></p>
10166
10167 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
10168 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
10169 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
10170 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
10171 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
10172 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
10173 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
10174 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
10175 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
10176 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
10177 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
10178 automatically.</p>
10179
10180 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
10181 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
10182
10183 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
10184 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
10185 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
10186
10187       </div>
10188       <div class="tags">
10189
10190
10191         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>.
10192
10193
10194       </div>
10195     </div>
10196     <div class="padding"></div>
10197
10198     <div class="entry">
10199       <div class="title">
10200         <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>
10201       </div>
10202       <div class="date">
10203         10th January 2012
10204       </div>
10205       <div class="body">
10206         <p>In the Squeeze version of
10207 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
10208 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
10209 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
10210 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
10211 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
10212 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
10213 first time.</p>
10214
10215 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
10216 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
10217 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
10218 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
10219
10220 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
10221 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
10222 new setting.</p>
10223
10224 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
10225 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
10226 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
10227
10228       </div>
10229       <div class="tags">
10230
10231
10232         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>.
10233
10234
10235       </div>
10236     </div>
10237     <div class="padding"></div>
10238
10239     <div class="entry">
10240       <div class="title">
10241         <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>
10242       </div>
10243       <div class="date">
10244          7th January 2012
10245       </div>
10246       <div class="body">
10247         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
10248 the second beta version of
10249 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
10250 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
10251 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
10252 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
10253 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
10254 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
10255 on the project announcement list.</p>
10256
10257       </div>
10258       <div class="tags">
10259
10260
10261         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>.
10262
10263
10264       </div>
10265     </div>
10266     <div class="padding"></div>
10267
10268     <div class="entry">
10269       <div class="title">
10270         <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>
10271       </div>
10272       <div class="date">
10273          3rd January 2012
10274       </div>
10275       <div class="body">
10276         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
10277 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
10278 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
10279 interesting.</p>
10280
10281 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
10282 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
10283 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
10284 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
10285 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
10286 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
10287 wrap up its tasks.</p>
10288
10289 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
10290 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
10291 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
10292 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
10293 because I was typing.</P>
10294
10295 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
10296 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
10297 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
10298 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
10299 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
10300 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
10301 generate entropy.</p>
10302
10303 <p>The fix is in
10304 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
10305 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
10306 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
10307 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
10308
10309       </div>
10310       <div class="tags">
10311
10312
10313         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>.
10314
10315
10316       </div>
10317     </div>
10318     <div class="padding"></div>
10319
10320     <div class="entry">
10321       <div class="title">
10322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
10323       </div>
10324       <div class="date">
10325         21st November 2011
10326       </div>
10327       <div class="body">
10328         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
10329 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
10330 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
10331 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
10332 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
10333 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
10334 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
10335 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
10336 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
10337 the tools to do so.</p>
10338
10339 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
10340 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
10341 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
10342 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
10343
10344 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
10345 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
10346 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
10347 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
10348 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
10349 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
10350 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
10351 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
10352
10353 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
10354 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
10355 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
10356
10357 <p><pre>
10358 #!/usr/bin/perl
10359 use strict;
10360 use warnings;
10361 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
10362 BEGIN {
10363     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
10364     my %rhelmodules = (
10365         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
10366         );
10367     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
10368         eval "use $module;";
10369         if ($@) {
10370             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
10371             system("yum install -y $pkg");
10372             eval "use $module;";
10373         }
10374     }
10375 }
10376 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
10377
10378 upgrade_dell();
10379
10380 exit 0;
10381
10382 sub run_firmware_script {
10383     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
10384     unless ($script) {
10385         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
10386         exit 1
10387     }
10388     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
10389
10390     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
10391         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
10392     } else {
10393         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
10394     }
10395 }
10396
10397 sub run_firmware_scripts {
10398     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
10399     # Run firmware packages
10400     for my $dir (@dirs) {
10401         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
10402         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
10403         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
10404             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
10405             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
10406         }
10407         closedir $dh;
10408     }
10409 }
10410
10411 sub download {
10412     my $url = shift;
10413     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
10414     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
10415 }
10416
10417 sub upgrade_dell {
10418     my @dirs;
10419     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10420     chomp $product;
10421
10422     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
10423
10424         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
10425         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
10426
10427         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
10428             CLEANUP => 1
10429             );
10430         chdir($tmpdir);
10431         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
10432         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
10433         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
10434         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
10435         my $fwopts = "-q";
10436         if (@paths) {
10437             for my $url (@paths) {
10438                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
10439             }
10440             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
10441         } else {
10442             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10443             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10444         }
10445         chdir('/');
10446     } else {
10447         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
10448         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
10449     }
10450 }
10451
10452 sub fetch_dell_fw {
10453     my $path = shift;
10454     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
10455     download($url);
10456 }
10457
10458 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
10459 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
10460 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
10461 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
10462     my $filename = shift;
10463
10464     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
10465     chomp $product;
10466     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
10467
10468     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
10469
10470     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
10471     my @paths;
10472     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
10473         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
10474         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
10475         my $oscode;
10476         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
10477             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
10478         } else {
10479             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
10480         }
10481         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
10482         {
10483             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
10484         }
10485     }
10486     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
10487         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
10488
10489         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
10490         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
10491
10492         my $cpath = $component->{path};
10493         for my $path (@paths) {
10494             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
10495                 push(@paths, $cpath);
10496             }
10497         }
10498     }
10499     return @paths;
10500 }
10501 </pre>
10502
10503 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
10504 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
10505 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
10506 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
10507 outdated.</p>
10508
10509       </div>
10510       <div class="tags">
10511
10512
10513         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>.
10514
10515
10516       </div>
10517     </div>
10518     <div class="padding"></div>
10519
10520     <div class="entry">
10521       <div class="title">
10522         <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>
10523       </div>
10524       <div class="date">
10525          7th October 2011
10526       </div>
10527       <div class="body">
10528         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
10529 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
10530 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
10531 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
10532 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
10533 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
10534 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
10535 models.</p>
10536
10537 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
10538 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
10539 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
10540 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
10541
10542 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
10543 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
10544 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
10545 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
10546 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
10547 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
10548 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
10549 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
10550 distributed.</p>
10551
10552 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
10553
10554 <ul>
10555
10556 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
10557   other relevant equipment.</li>
10558
10559 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
10560
10561 </ul>
10562
10563 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
10564 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
10565 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
10566 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
10567 books available.</p>
10568
10569 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
10570 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
10571 libraries. :)</p>
10572
10573       </div>
10574       <div class="tags">
10575
10576
10577         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>.
10578
10579
10580       </div>
10581     </div>
10582     <div class="padding"></div>
10583
10584     <div class="entry">
10585       <div class="title">
10586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
10587       </div>
10588       <div class="date">
10589         17th September 2011
10590       </div>
10591       <div class="body">
10592         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
10593 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
10594 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
10595 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
10596 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
10597 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
10598 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
10599 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
10600
10601 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
10602
10603 <blockquote><pre>
10604 #!/bin/sh
10605 # apt-get install lsdvd
10606 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10607 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
10608 </pre></blockquote>
10609
10610 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
10611 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
10612 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
10613 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
10614
10615 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
10616 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
10617 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
10618 back as an ISO.
10619
10620 <blockquote><pre>
10621 #!/bin/sh
10622 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
10623 set -e
10624 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
10625 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10626 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
10627 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
10628 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
10629 </pre></blockquote>
10630
10631 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
10632
10633 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
10634 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
10635 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
10636 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
10637 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
10638
10639 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
10640 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
10641 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
10642 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
10643 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
10644 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
10645
10646       </div>
10647       <div class="tags">
10648
10649
10650         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>.
10651
10652
10653       </div>
10654     </div>
10655     <div class="padding"></div>
10656
10657     <div class="entry">
10658       <div class="title">
10659         <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>
10660       </div>
10661       <div class="date">
10662          4th August 2011
10663       </div>
10664       <div class="body">
10665         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
10666 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
10667 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
10668 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
10669 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
10670 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
10671 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
10672 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
10673 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
10674
10675 <p><blockquote>
10676 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
10677 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
10678 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
10679 </blockquote></p>
10680
10681 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
10682 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
10683 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
10684 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
10685 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
10686 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
10687 hard to explain.</p>
10688
10689 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
10690 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
10691 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
10692 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
10693 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
10694 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
10695 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
10696 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
10697 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
10698 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
10699 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
10700 mode).</p>
10701
10702 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
10703 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
10704 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
10705 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
10706 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
10707 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
10708 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
10709 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
10710 after visiting single user mode.</p>
10711
10712 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
10713 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
10714 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
10715 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
10716 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
10717 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
10718 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
10719 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
10720
10721 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
10722 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
10723 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
10724
10725       </div>
10726       <div class="tags">
10727
10728
10729         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>.
10730
10731
10732       </div>
10733     </div>
10734     <div class="padding"></div>
10735
10736     <div class="entry">
10737       <div class="title">
10738         <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>
10739       </div>
10740       <div class="date">
10741         30th July 2011
10742       </div>
10743       <div class="body">
10744         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
10745 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
10746 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
10747 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
10748 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
10749 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
10750 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
10751 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
10752 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
10753 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
10754 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
10755 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
10756 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
10757
10758 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
10759 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
10760 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
10761 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
10762 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
10763 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
10764 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
10765 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
10766 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
10767
10768 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
10769 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
10770 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
10771 is presented.</p>
10772
10773 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
10774 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
10775 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
10776 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
10777 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
10778 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
10779 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
10780 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
10781 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
10782 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
10783 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
10784 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
10785 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
10786 find time to push this forward.</p>
10787
10788       </div>
10789       <div class="tags">
10790
10791
10792         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>.
10793
10794
10795       </div>
10796     </div>
10797     <div class="padding"></div>
10798
10799     <div class="entry">
10800       <div class="title">
10801         <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>
10802       </div>
10803       <div class="date">
10804         29th July 2011
10805       </div>
10806       <div class="body">
10807         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
10808 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
10809 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
10810 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
10811 issues.</p>
10812
10813 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
10814 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
10815 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
10816
10817 <ol>
10818
10819 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
10820 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
10821 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
10822 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
10823 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
10824 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
10825 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
10826 Debian.</li>
10827
10828 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
10829 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
10830 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
10831 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
10832 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
10833 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
10834 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
10835 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
10836 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
10837 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
10838 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
10839 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
10840 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
10841
10842 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
10843 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
10844 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
10845 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
10846 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
10847 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
10848 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
10849 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
10850 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
10851 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
10852
10853 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
10854 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
10855 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
10856 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
10857 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
10858 latter behaviour.</li>
10859
10860 </ol>
10861
10862 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
10863 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
10864 it do not matter much.</p>
10865
10866 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
10867 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
10868 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
10869
10870       </div>
10871       <div class="tags">
10872
10873
10874         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>.
10875
10876
10877       </div>
10878     </div>
10879     <div class="padding"></div>
10880
10881     <div class="entry">
10882       <div class="title">
10883         <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>
10884       </div>
10885       <div class="date">
10886         26th July 2011
10887       </div>
10888       <div class="body">
10889         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
10890 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
10891 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
10892 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
10893 security support for a few years.</p>
10894
10895 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
10896 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
10897 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
10898 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
10899 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
10900 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
10901 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
10902 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
10903 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
10904 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
10905 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
10906 easier in the future.</p>
10907
10908 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
10909 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
10910 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
10911 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
10912 do not have time for.</p>
10913
10914       </div>
10915       <div class="tags">
10916
10917
10918         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>.
10919
10920
10921       </div>
10922     </div>
10923     <div class="padding"></div>
10924
10925     <div class="entry">
10926       <div class="title">
10927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
10928       </div>
10929       <div class="date">
10930         20th June 2011
10931       </div>
10932       <div class="body">
10933         <p>Reading
10934 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
10935 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
10936 parts of the
10937 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
10938 and
10939 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
10940 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
10941 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
10942 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
10943
10944       </div>
10945       <div class="tags">
10946
10947
10948         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>.
10949
10950
10951       </div>
10952     </div>
10953     <div class="padding"></div>
10954
10955     <div class="entry">
10956       <div class="title">
10957         <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>
10958       </div>
10959       <div class="date">
10960         30th April 2011
10961       </div>
10962       <div class="body">
10963         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
10964 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
10965 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
10966 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
10967 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
10968 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
10969 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
10970 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
10971 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
10972 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
10973
10974 <p>Where is it?  Visit
10975 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
10976 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
10977 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
10978 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
10979
10980       </div>
10981       <div class="tags">
10982
10983
10984         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>.
10985
10986
10987       </div>
10988     </div>
10989     <div class="padding"></div>
10990
10991     <div class="entry">
10992       <div class="title">
10993         <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>
10994       </div>
10995       <div class="date">
10996         29th April 2011
10997       </div>
10998       <div class="body">
10999         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
11000 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
11001 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
11002 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
11003 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
11004 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
11005 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
11006 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
11007 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
11008 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
11009 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
11010 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
11011 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
11012
11013 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
11014 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
11015 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
11016 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
11017 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
11018 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
11019 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
11020 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
11021 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
11022 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
11023 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
11024 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
11025 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
11026
11027 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
11028 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
11029 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
11030 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
11031 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
11032 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
11033 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
11034 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
11035 it.</p>
11036
11037 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
11038 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
11039 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
11040 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
11041 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
11042 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
11043 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
11044
11045 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
11046 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
11047 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
11048 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
11049 and range= options.</p>
11050
11051 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
11052 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
11053 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
11054 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
11055 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
11056 to best handle this.  I've noticed
11057 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
11058 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
11059 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
11060 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
11061
11062 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
11063 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
11064 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
11065 discussions instead of only
11066 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
11067 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
11068 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
11069 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
11070 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
11071 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
11072
11073       </div>
11074       <div class="tags">
11075
11076
11077         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>.
11078
11079
11080       </div>
11081     </div>
11082     <div class="padding"></div>
11083
11084     <div class="entry">
11085       <div class="title">
11086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
11087       </div>
11088       <div class="date">
11089          6th April 2011
11090       </div>
11091       <div class="body">
11092         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
11093 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
11094 A few days ago the project
11095 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
11096 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
11097 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
11098 into Gnash.</p>
11099
11100       </div>
11101       <div class="tags">
11102
11103
11104         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>.
11105
11106
11107       </div>
11108     </div>
11109     <div class="padding"></div>
11110
11111     <div class="entry">
11112       <div class="title">
11113         <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>
11114       </div>
11115       <div class="date">
11116          3rd April 2011
11117       </div>
11118       <div class="body">
11119         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
11120 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
11121 update in English.</p>
11122
11123 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
11124 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
11125 of the British service
11126 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
11127 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
11128 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
11129 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
11130 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
11131 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
11132 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
11133 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
11134 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
11135 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
11136 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
11137 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
11138 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
11139
11140 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
11141 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
11142 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
11143 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
11144 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
11145 public infrastructure.</p>
11146
11147 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
11148 such service?</p>
11149
11150       </div>
11151       <div class="tags">
11152
11153
11154         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>.
11155
11156
11157       </div>
11158     </div>
11159     <div class="padding"></div>
11160
11161     <div class="entry">
11162       <div class="title">
11163         <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>
11164       </div>
11165       <div class="date">
11166         28th January 2011
11167       </div>
11168       <div class="body">
11169         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
11170 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
11171 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
11172 available on the Internet, and check our locally
11173 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
11174 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
11175 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
11176 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
11177 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
11178 out which security holes were present in our free software
11179 collection.</p>
11180
11181 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
11182 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
11183 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
11184 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
11185 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
11186 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
11187 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
11188 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
11189 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
11190 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
11191 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
11192 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
11193 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
11194 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
11195 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
11196 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
11197
11198 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
11199 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
11200 check out, one could look up
11201 <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
11202 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
11203 The most recent one is
11204 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
11205 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
11206 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
11207
11208 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
11209 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
11210 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
11211 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
11212 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
11213 security issues out.</p>
11214
11215 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
11216 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
11217 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
11218 RHEL is providing
11219 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
11220 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
11221 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
11222
11223 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
11224 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
11225 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
11226 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
11227 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
11228 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
11229 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
11230 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
11231 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
11232 established soon.</p>
11233
11234 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
11235 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
11236 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
11237 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
11238 for their packages.</p>
11239
11240       </div>
11241       <div class="tags">
11242
11243
11244         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>.
11245
11246
11247       </div>
11248     </div>
11249     <div class="padding"></div>
11250
11251     <div class="entry">
11252       <div class="title">
11253         <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>
11254       </div>
11255       <div class="date">
11256         23rd January 2011
11257       </div>
11258       <div class="body">
11259         <p>In the
11260 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
11261 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
11262 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
11263 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
11264 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
11265 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
11266 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
11267 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
11268 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
11269 one of my machines like this:</p>
11270
11271 <pre>
11272 loaded modules:
11273 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
11274 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
11275 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
11276 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
11277 10de:03ec pata_amd
11278 10de:03f6 sata_nv
11279 1022:1103 k8temp
11280 109e:036e bttv
11281 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
11282 11ab:4364 sky2
11283 </pre>
11284
11285 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
11286 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
11287
11288 <pre>
11289 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
11290     echo loaded pci modules:
11291     (
11292         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
11293         for address in * ; do
11294             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11295                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11296                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11297                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11298                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
11299                     echo "$id $module"
11300                 fi
11301             fi
11302         done
11303     )
11304     echo
11305 fi
11306 </pre>
11307
11308 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
11309 mappings:</p>
11310
11311 <pre>
11312 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
11313     echo loaded usb modules:
11314     (
11315         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
11316         for address in * ; do
11317             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
11318                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
11319                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
11320                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
11321                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
11322                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
11323                         echo "$id $module"
11324                     fi
11325                 fi
11326             fi
11327         done
11328     )
11329     echo
11330 fi
11331 </pre>
11332
11333 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
11334 well.</p>
11335
11336       </div>
11337       <div class="tags">
11338
11339
11340         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>.
11341
11342
11343       </div>
11344     </div>
11345     <div class="padding"></div>
11346
11347     <div class="entry">
11348       <div class="title">
11349         <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>
11350       </div>
11351       <div class="date">
11352         16th January 2011
11353       </div>
11354       <div class="body">
11355         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
11356 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
11357 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
11358 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
11359 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
11360 the Wikipedia article on
11361 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
11362 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
11363 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
11364 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
11365 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
11366 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
11367 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
11368 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
11369 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
11370 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
11371 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
11372 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
11373
11374 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
11375 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
11376 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
11377 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
11378 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
11379 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
11380 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
11381 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
11382 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
11383 from last week</a>.</p>
11384
11385 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
11386 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
11387 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
11388 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
11389 was without royalties and license terms, check out
11390 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
11391 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
11392
11393 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
11394 available from
11395 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
11396 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
11397 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
11398
11399 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
11400 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
11401 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
11402 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
11403
11404       </div>
11405       <div class="tags">
11406
11407
11408         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>.
11409
11410
11411       </div>
11412     </div>
11413     <div class="padding"></div>
11414
11415     <div class="entry">
11416       <div class="title">
11417         <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>
11418       </div>
11419       <div class="date">
11420         12th January 2011
11421       </div>
11422       <div class="body">
11423         <p>Today I discovered
11424 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
11425 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
11426 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
11427 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
11428 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
11429 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
11430 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
11431 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
11432 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
11433 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
11434 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
11435 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
11436 on the Google announcement is available from
11437 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
11438 A good read. :)</p>
11439
11440 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
11441 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
11442 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
11443 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
11444 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
11445 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
11446 browsers support H.264, and others support
11447 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
11448 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
11449 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
11450 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
11451 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
11452 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
11453 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
11454 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
11455
11456 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
11457 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
11458 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
11459 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
11460 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
11461 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
11462 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
11463
11464 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
11465 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
11466 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
11467 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
11468 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
11469 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
11470 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
11471
11472 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
11473 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
11474 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
11475 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
11476 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
11477 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
11478 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
11479
11480 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
11481 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
11482 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
11483 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
11484 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
11485 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
11486 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
11487 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
11488 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
11489 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
11490 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
11491 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
11492 I guess time will tell.</p>
11493
11494 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
11495 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
11496 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
11497
11498       </div>
11499       <div class="tags">
11500
11501
11502         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>.
11503
11504
11505       </div>
11506     </div>
11507     <div class="padding"></div>
11508
11509     <div class="entry">
11510       <div class="title">
11511         <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>
11512       </div>
11513       <div class="date">
11514         30th December 2010
11515       </div>
11516       <div class="body">
11517         <p>After trying to
11518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
11519 Ogg Theora</a> to
11520 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
11521 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
11522 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
11523 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
11524 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
11525 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
11526 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
11527
11528 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
11529 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
11530 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
11531 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
11532 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
11533 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
11534 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
11535
11536 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
11537 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
11538
11539       </div>
11540       <div class="tags">
11541
11542
11543         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>.
11544
11545
11546       </div>
11547     </div>
11548     <div class="padding"></div>
11549
11550     <div class="entry">
11551       <div class="title">
11552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
11553       </div>
11554       <div class="date">
11555         27th December 2010
11556       </div>
11557       <div class="body">
11558         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
11559 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
11560 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
11561 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
11562 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
11563 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
11564 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
11565 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
11566
11567 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
11568 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
11569 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
11570 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
11571 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
11572 page</a>.</p>
11573
11574 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
11575 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
11576 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
11577 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
11578 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
11579 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
11580 specification on equal terms.</p>
11581
11582 <blockquote>
11583
11584 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
11585 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
11586 open standard:</p>
11587
11588 <ul>
11589
11590 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11591 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11592 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
11593 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
11594
11595 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11596 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
11597 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
11598 nominal fee.</li>
11599
11600 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
11601 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
11602 free basis.</li>
11603
11604 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11605
11606 </ul>
11607 </blockquote>
11608
11609 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
11610 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
11611 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
11612 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
11613 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
11614 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
11615 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
11616
11617 <blockquote>
11618
11619 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
11620
11621 <ol>
11622
11623 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
11624 tilgængelig.</li>
11625
11626 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
11627 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
11628
11629 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
11630 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
11631
11632 </ol>
11633
11634 </blockquote>
11635
11636 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
11637 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
11638
11639 <blockquote>
11640
11641 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
11642
11643 <ol>
11644
11645 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
11646 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
11647
11648 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
11649 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
11650 Standard themselves;</li>
11651
11652 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
11653 any party or in any business model;</li>
11654
11655 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
11656 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
11657 parties;</li>
11658
11659 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
11660 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
11661 parties.</li>
11662
11663 </ol>
11664
11665 </blockquote>
11666
11667 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
11668 its
11669 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
11670 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
11671
11672 <blockquote>
11673 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
11674
11675 <ul>
11676
11677 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
11678   democratic:
11679
11680          <ul>
11681
11682          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
11683             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
11684             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
11685             and managed.</li>
11686
11687          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
11688             method, can be changed through input from all
11689             participants.</li>
11690
11691          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
11692             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
11693
11694          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
11695             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
11696
11697          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
11698             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
11699             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
11700
11701          </ul>
11702
11703 </li>
11704
11705 </ul>
11706
11707 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
11708 <ul>
11709
11710 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
11711   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
11712   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
11713   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
11714   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
11715
11716 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
11717   a technical or economic barriers</li>
11718
11719 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
11720   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
11721   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
11722   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
11723   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
11724   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
11725   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
11726   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
11727   intended to function.</li>
11728
11729 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
11730   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
11731   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
11732
11733 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
11734   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
11735   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
11736   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
11737   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
11738   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
11739   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
11740   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
11741
11742       <ul>
11743
11744       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
11745         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
11746         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
11747
11748       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
11749         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
11750         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
11751         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
11752
11753       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
11754         licensor</li>
11755
11756       </ul>
11757 </li>
11758
11759 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
11760   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
11761   or restricted licensing terms</li>
11762
11763 </ul>
11764
11765 </blockquote>
11766
11767 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
11768 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
11769 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
11770 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
11771 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
11772 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
11773 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
11774 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
11775 Standards.</p>
11776
11777       </div>
11778       <div class="tags">
11779
11780
11781         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>.
11782
11783
11784       </div>
11785     </div>
11786     <div class="padding"></div>
11787
11788     <div class="entry">
11789       <div class="title">
11790         <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>
11791       </div>
11792       <div class="date">
11793         25th December 2010
11794       </div>
11795       <div class="body">
11796         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
11797 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
11798
11799 <blockquote>
11800
11801 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
11802 as follows:</p>
11803
11804 <ol>
11805
11806 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
11807 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
11808 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
11809
11810 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11811 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11812 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
11813 parties.</li>
11814
11815 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11816 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
11817 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
11818
11819 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
11820 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
11821
11822 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11823
11824 </ol>
11825
11826 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
11827 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
11828 products based on the standard.</p>
11829 </blockquote>
11830
11831 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
11832 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
11833 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
11834 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
11835 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
11836 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
11837 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
11838 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
11839
11840 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
11841
11842 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
11843 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
11844 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
11845 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
11846 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
11847 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
11848 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
11849 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
11850 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
11851 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
11852 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
11853 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
11854 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
11855 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
11856
11857 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
11858
11859 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
11860 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
11861 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
11862 documentation indicating this.</p>
11863
11864 <p>According to
11865 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
11866 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
11867 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
11868 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
11869 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
11870 report is correct.</p>
11871
11872 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
11873
11874 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
11875 container format</a> and both the
11876 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
11877 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
11878 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
11879
11880 <blockquote>
11881
11882 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
11883 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
11884 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
11885 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
11886 specification compliance.
11887
11888 </blockquote>
11889
11890 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
11891 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
11892 this is the term:<p>
11893
11894 <blockquote>
11895
11896 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
11897 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
11898 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
11899 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
11900 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
11901 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
11902 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
11903 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
11904 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
11905 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
11906 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
11907 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
11908
11909 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
11910 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
11911 </blockquote>
11912
11913 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
11914 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
11915 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
11916 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
11917 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
11918
11919 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
11920
11921 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
11922 Theora format.
11923 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
11924 and
11925 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
11926 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
11927 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
11928 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
11929 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
11930 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
11931 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
11932 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
11933
11934 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
11935
11936 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
11937
11938 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11939
11940 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
11941 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
11942 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
11943 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
11944 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
11945 this.</p>
11946
11947 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
11948 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
11949
11950       </div>
11951       <div class="tags">
11952
11953
11954         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>.
11955
11956
11957       </div>
11958     </div>
11959     <div class="padding"></div>
11960
11961     <div class="entry">
11962       <div class="title">
11963         <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>
11964       </div>
11965       <div class="date">
11966         25th December 2010
11967       </div>
11968       <div class="body">
11969         <p>A few days ago
11970 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
11971 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
11972 2.0 of
11973 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
11974 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
11975 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
11976 Nothing very surprising there, given
11977 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
11978 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
11979 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
11980 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
11981 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
11982 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
11983 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
11984 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
11985 standard definition from its content.</p>
11986
11987 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
11988 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
11989 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
11990 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
11991 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
11992 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
11993 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
11994 background information about that story is available in
11995 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
11996 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
11997
11998 <blockquote>
11999 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
12000 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
12001 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
12002
12003 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
12004
12005 <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>
12006
12007 <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>
12008
12009 <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>
12010
12011 <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>
12012
12013 <p>
12014 <ul>
12015 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
12016 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
12017 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
12018 </ul>
12019 </p>
12020
12021 <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>
12022
12023 <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>
12024
12025 <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>
12026
12027 <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>
12028
12029 <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>
12030
12031
12032 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
12033 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
12034 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
12035 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
12036 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
12037 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
12038
12039 </p>
12040
12041 <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>
12042
12043 <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>
12044
12045 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
12046
12047 <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>
12048
12049 <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>
12050
12051 <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>
12052
12053 <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>
12054
12055 <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>
12056
12057 <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>
12058
12059 <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>
12060
12061 <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>
12062
12063 <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>
12064
12065 <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>
12066
12067 <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>
12068
12069 <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>
12070
12071 <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>
12072
12073 <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>
12074
12075 <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>
12076
12077 <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>
12078
12079 <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>
12080
12081 <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>
12082
12083 <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>
12084
12085 <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>
12086
12087 <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>
12088
12089 <p>On security:</p>
12090
12091 <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>
12092
12093 <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>
12094
12095 <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>
12096
12097 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
12098
12099 <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>
12100
12101 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
12102
12103 <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>
12104
12105 <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>
12106
12107 <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>
12108
12109 <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>
12110
12111 <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>
12112
12113 <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>
12114
12115 <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>
12116
12117 <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>
12118
12119 <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>
12120
12121 <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>
12122
12123 <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>
12124
12125 <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>
12126
12127 <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>
12128
12129 <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>
12130
12131 <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>
12132
12133 <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>
12134
12135 <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>
12136
12137 <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>
12138
12139 <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>
12140
12141 <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>
12142
12143 <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>
12144
12145 <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>
12146
12147 <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>
12148
12149 <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>
12150
12151 <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>
12152
12153 <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>
12154
12155 <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>
12156
12157 <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>
12158
12159 <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>
12160
12161 <p>Cordially,<br>
12162 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
12163 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
12164 </blockquote>
12165
12166       </div>
12167       <div class="tags">
12168
12169
12170         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>.
12171
12172
12173       </div>
12174     </div>
12175     <div class="padding"></div>
12176
12177     <div class="entry">
12178       <div class="title">
12179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
12180       </div>
12181       <div class="date">
12182         25th December 2010
12183       </div>
12184       <div class="body">
12185         <p>Half a year ago I
12186 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
12187 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
12188 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
12189 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
12190
12191 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
12192 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
12193 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
12194 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
12195 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
12196 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
12197 got such a great test tool available.</p>
12198
12199       </div>
12200       <div class="tags">
12201
12202
12203         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>.
12204
12205
12206       </div>
12207     </div>
12208     <div class="padding"></div>
12209
12210     <div class="entry">
12211       <div class="title">
12212         <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>
12213       </div>
12214       <div class="date">
12215         22nd December 2010
12216       </div>
12217       <div class="body">
12218         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
12219 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
12220 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
12221 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
12222 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
12223 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
12224 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
12225 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
12226 university.</p>
12227
12228 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
12229 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
12230 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
12231 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
12232 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
12233 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
12234 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
12235 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
12236
12237 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
12238 I perform on a new model.</p>
12239
12240 <ul>
12241
12242 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
12243 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
12244 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
12245
12246 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
12247 installation, X.org is working.</li>
12248
12249 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
12250 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
12251 reported by the program.</li>
12252
12253 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
12254 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
12255 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
12256 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
12257 normally test this by playing
12258 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
12259 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
12260
12261 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
12262 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12263
12264 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
12265 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
12266
12267 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
12268 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
12269
12270 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
12271 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
12272 few.</li>
12273
12274 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
12275 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
12276 notice this.</li>
12277
12278 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
12279 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
12280 resume.</li>
12281
12282 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
12283 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
12284 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
12285 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
12286 not.</li>
12287
12288 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
12289 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
12290 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
12291 existence.</li>
12292
12293 </ul>
12294
12295 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
12296 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
12297 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
12298 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
12299 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
12300 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
12301 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
12302 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
12303
12304       </div>
12305       <div class="tags">
12306
12307
12308         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>.
12309
12310
12311       </div>
12312     </div>
12313     <div class="padding"></div>
12314
12315     <div class="entry">
12316       <div class="title">
12317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
12318       </div>
12319       <div class="date">
12320         11th December 2010
12321       </div>
12322       <div class="body">
12323         <p>As I continue to explore
12324 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
12325 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
12326 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
12327
12328 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
12329 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
12330 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
12331 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
12332 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
12333 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
12334 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
12335 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
12336 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
12337 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
12338 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
12339 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
12340 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
12341 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
12342 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
12343 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
12344 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
12345 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
12346 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
12347 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
12348
12349 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
12350 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
12351 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
12352 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
12353 If the Skolelinux foundation
12354 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
12355 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
12356 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
12357 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
12358 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
12359 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
12360 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
12361 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
12362
12363 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
12364 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
12365 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
12366 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
12367 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
12368 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
12369 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
12370 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
12371 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
12372 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
12373 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
12374 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
12375 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
12376 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
12377 currencies.</p>
12378
12379 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
12380 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
12381 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
12382 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
12383 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
12384 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
12385 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
12386 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
12387 BitCoins.  Check out
12388 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
12389 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
12390 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
12391 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
12392 yet.</p>
12393
12394 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
12395 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
12396 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
12397 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
12398 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
12399
12400       </div>
12401       <div class="tags">
12402
12403
12404         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>.
12405
12406
12407       </div>
12408     </div>
12409     <div class="padding"></div>
12410
12411     <div class="entry">
12412       <div class="title">
12413         <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>
12414       </div>
12415       <div class="date">
12416         10th December 2010
12417       </div>
12418       <div class="body">
12419         <p>With this weeks lawless
12420 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
12421 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
12422 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
12423 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
12424 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
12425 A blog post from
12426 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
12427 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
12428 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
12429 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
12430 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
12431 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
12432 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
12433
12434 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
12435 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
12436 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
12437 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
12438 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
12439 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
12440 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
12441 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
12442 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
12443 Debian</a> soon.</p>
12444
12445 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
12446 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
12447 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
12448 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
12449 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
12450 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
12451 you can even get
12452 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
12453 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
12454 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
12455 on the current exchange rates.</p>
12456
12457 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
12458 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
12459 donations to the address
12460 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
12461
12462       </div>
12463       <div class="tags">
12464
12465
12466         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>.
12467
12468
12469       </div>
12470     </div>
12471     <div class="padding"></div>
12472
12473     <div class="entry">
12474       <div class="title">
12475         <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>
12476       </div>
12477       <div class="date">
12478          9th December 2010
12479       </div>
12480       <div class="body">
12481         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
12482 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
12483 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
12484 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
12485 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
12486 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
12487 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
12488 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
12489 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
12490 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
12491 operational.</p>
12492
12493 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
12494 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
12495 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
12496 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
12497 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
12498 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
12499 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
12500
12501       </div>
12502       <div class="tags">
12503
12504
12505         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>.
12506
12507
12508       </div>
12509     </div>
12510     <div class="padding"></div>
12511
12512     <div class="entry">
12513       <div class="title">
12514         <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>
12515       </div>
12516       <div class="date">
12517         29th November 2010
12518       </div>
12519       <div class="body">
12520         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12521 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
12522 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
12523 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
12524 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
12525 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
12526
12527 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
12528 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
12529 will hold its
12530 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
12531 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
12532 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
12533 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
12534 vote this year.</p>
12535
12536       </div>
12537       <div class="tags">
12538
12539
12540         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>.
12541
12542
12543       </div>
12544     </div>
12545     <div class="padding"></div>
12546
12547     <div class="entry">
12548       <div class="title">
12549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
12550       </div>
12551       <div class="date">
12552         27th November 2010
12553       </div>
12554       <div class="body">
12555         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
12556 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
12557 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
12558 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
12559 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
12560 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
12561 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
12562 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
12563
12564 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
12565 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
12566 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
12567 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
12568 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
12569 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
12570 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
12571 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
12572 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
12573 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
12574 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
12575
12576 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
12577 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
12578 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
12579 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
12580 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
12581 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
12582 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
12583 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
12584 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
12585 what is going on.</p>
12586
12587       </div>
12588       <div class="tags">
12589
12590
12591         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>.
12592
12593
12594       </div>
12595     </div>
12596     <div class="padding"></div>
12597
12598     <div class="entry">
12599       <div class="title">
12600         <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>
12601       </div>
12602       <div class="date">
12603         22nd November 2010
12604       </div>
12605       <div class="body">
12606         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
12607 upgrade testing of the
12608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12609 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
12610 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
12611 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
12612
12613 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
12614
12615 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12616
12617 <blockquote><p>
12618   apache2.2-bin
12619   aptdaemon
12620   baobab
12621   binfmt-support
12622   browser-plugin-gnash
12623   cheese-common
12624   cli-common
12625   cups-pk-helper
12626   dmz-cursor-theme
12627   empathy
12628   empathy-common
12629   freedesktop-sound-theme
12630   freeglut3
12631   gconf-defaults-service
12632   gdm-themes
12633   gedit-plugins
12634   geoclue
12635   geoclue-hostip
12636   geoclue-localnet
12637   geoclue-manual
12638   geoclue-yahoo
12639   gnash
12640   gnash-common
12641   gnome
12642   gnome-backgrounds
12643   gnome-cards-data
12644   gnome-codec-install
12645   gnome-core
12646   gnome-desktop-environment
12647   gnome-disk-utility
12648   gnome-screenshot
12649   gnome-search-tool
12650   gnome-session-canberra
12651   gnome-system-log
12652   gnome-themes-extras
12653   gnome-themes-more
12654   gnome-user-share
12655   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12656   gstreamer0.10-tools
12657   gtk2-engines
12658   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12659   gtk2-engines-smooth
12660   hamster-applet
12661   libapache2-mod-dnssd
12662   libapr1
12663   libaprutil1
12664   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
12665   libaprutil1-ldap
12666   libart2.0-cil
12667   libboost-date-time1.42.0
12668   libboost-python1.42.0
12669   libboost-thread1.42.0
12670   libchamplain-0.4-0
12671   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
12672   libcheese-gtk18
12673   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12674   libcryptui0
12675   libdiscid0
12676   libelf1
12677   libepc-1.0-2
12678   libepc-common
12679   libepc-ui-1.0-2
12680   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12681   libfreerdp0
12682   libgconf2.0-cil
12683   libgdata-common
12684   libgdata7
12685   libgdu-gtk0
12686   libgee2
12687   libgeoclue0
12688   libgexiv2-0
12689   libgif4
12690   libglade2.0-cil
12691   libglib2.0-cil
12692   libgmime2.4-cil
12693   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12694   libgnome2.24-cil
12695   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
12696   libgpod-common
12697   libgpod4
12698   libgtk2.0-cil
12699   libgtkglext1
12700   libgtksourceview2.0-common
12701   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12702   libmono-addins0.2-cil
12703   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
12704   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12705   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
12706   libmono-posix2.0-cil
12707   libmono-security2.0-cil
12708   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12709   libmono-system2.0-cil
12710   libmtp8
12711   libmusicbrainz3-6
12712   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
12713   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
12714   libopal3.6.8
12715   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
12716   libpt2.6.7
12717   libpython2.6
12718   librpm1
12719   librpmio1
12720   libsdl1.2debian
12721   libsrtp0
12722   libssh-4
12723   libtelepathy-farsight0
12724   libtelepathy-glib0
12725   libtidy-0.99-0
12726   media-player-info
12727   mesa-utils
12728   mono-2.0-gac
12729   mono-gac
12730   mono-runtime
12731   nautilus-sendto
12732   nautilus-sendto-empathy
12733   p7zip-full
12734   pkg-config
12735   python-aptdaemon
12736   python-aptdaemon-gtk
12737   python-axiom
12738   python-beautifulsoup
12739   python-bugbuddy
12740   python-clientform
12741   python-coherence
12742   python-configobj
12743   python-crypto
12744   python-cupshelpers
12745   python-elementtree
12746   python-epsilon
12747   python-evolution
12748   python-feedparser
12749   python-gdata
12750   python-gdbm
12751   python-gst0.10
12752   python-gtkglext1
12753   python-gtksourceview2
12754   python-httplib2
12755   python-louie
12756   python-mako
12757   python-markupsafe
12758   python-mechanize
12759   python-nevow
12760   python-notify
12761   python-opengl
12762   python-openssl
12763   python-pam
12764   python-pkg-resources
12765   python-pyasn1
12766   python-pysqlite2
12767   python-rdflib
12768   python-serial
12769   python-tagpy
12770   python-twisted-bin
12771   python-twisted-conch
12772   python-twisted-core
12773   python-twisted-web
12774   python-utidylib
12775   python-webkit
12776   python-xdg
12777   python-zope.interface
12778   remmina
12779   remmina-plugin-data
12780   remmina-plugin-rdp
12781   remmina-plugin-vnc
12782   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12783   rhythmbox-plugins
12784   rpm-common
12785   rpm2cpio
12786   seahorse-plugins
12787   shotwell
12788   software-center
12789   system-config-printer-udev
12790   telepathy-gabble
12791   telepathy-mission-control-5
12792   telepathy-salut
12793   tomboy
12794   totem
12795   totem-coherence
12796   totem-mozilla
12797   totem-plugins
12798   transmission-common
12799   xdg-user-dirs
12800   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
12801   xserver-xephyr
12802 </p></blockquote>
12803
12804 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12805
12806 <blockquote><p>
12807   cheese
12808   ekiga
12809   eog
12810   epiphany-extensions
12811   evolution-exchange
12812   fast-user-switch-applet
12813   file-roller
12814   gcalctool
12815   gconf-editor
12816   gdm
12817   gedit
12818   gedit-common
12819   gnome-games
12820   gnome-games-data
12821   gnome-nettool
12822   gnome-system-tools
12823   gnome-themes
12824   gnuchess
12825   gucharmap
12826   guile-1.8-libs
12827   libavahi-ui0
12828   libdmx1
12829   libgalago3
12830   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12831   libgtksourceview2.0-0
12832   liblircclient0
12833   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
12834   libspeexdsp1
12835   libsvga1
12836   rhythmbox
12837   seahorse
12838   sound-juicer
12839   system-config-printer
12840   totem-common
12841   transmission-gtk
12842   vinagre
12843   vino
12844 </p></blockquote>
12845
12846 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12847
12848 <blockquote><p>
12849   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12850 </p></blockquote>
12851
12852 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12853
12854 <blockquote><p>
12855 [nothing]
12856 </p></blockquote>
12857
12858 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
12859
12860 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12861
12862 <blockquote><p>
12863   ksmserver
12864 </p></blockquote>
12865
12866 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12867
12868 <blockquote><p>
12869   kwin
12870   network-manager-kde
12871 </p></blockquote>
12872
12873 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12874
12875 <blockquote><p>
12876   arts
12877   dolphin
12878   freespacenotifier
12879   google-gadgets-gst
12880   google-gadgets-xul
12881   kappfinder
12882   kcalc
12883   kcharselect
12884   kde-core
12885   kde-plasma-desktop
12886   kde-standard
12887   kde-window-manager
12888   kdeartwork
12889   kdeartwork-emoticons
12890   kdeartwork-style
12891   kdeartwork-theme-icon
12892   kdebase
12893   kdebase-apps
12894   kdebase-workspace
12895   kdebase-workspace-bin
12896   kdebase-workspace-data
12897   kdeeject
12898   kdelibs
12899   kdeplasma-addons
12900   kdeutils
12901   kdewallpapers
12902   kdf
12903   kfloppy
12904   kgpg
12905   khelpcenter4
12906   kinfocenter
12907   konq-plugins-l10n
12908   konqueror-nsplugins
12909   kscreensaver
12910   kscreensaver-xsavers
12911   ktimer
12912   kwrite
12913   libgle3
12914   libkde4-ruby1.8
12915   libkonq5
12916   libkonq5-templates
12917   libnetpbm10
12918   libplasma-ruby
12919   libplasma-ruby1.8
12920   libqt4-ruby1.8
12921   marble-data
12922   marble-plugins
12923   netpbm
12924   nuvola-icon-theme
12925   plasma-dataengines-workspace
12926   plasma-desktop
12927   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
12928   plasma-runners-addons
12929   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
12930   plasma-scriptengine-python
12931   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
12932   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
12933   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
12934   plasma-scriptengines
12935   plasma-wallpapers-addons
12936   plasma-widget-folderview
12937   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12938   ruby
12939   sweeper
12940   update-notifier-kde
12941   xscreensaver-data-extra
12942   xscreensaver-gl
12943   xscreensaver-gl-extra
12944   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12945 </p></blockquote>
12946
12947 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12948
12949 <blockquote><p>
12950   ark
12951   google-gadgets-common
12952   google-gadgets-qt
12953   htdig
12954   kate
12955   kdebase-bin
12956   kdebase-data
12957   kdepasswd
12958   kfind
12959   klipper
12960   konq-plugins
12961   konqueror
12962   ksysguard
12963   ksysguardd
12964   libarchive1
12965   libcln6
12966   libeet1
12967   libeina-svn-06
12968   libggadget-1.0-0b
12969   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
12970   libgps19
12971   libkdecorations4
12972   libkephal4
12973   libkonq4
12974   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
12975   libkscreensaver5
12976   libksgrd4
12977   libksignalplotter4
12978   libkunitconversion4
12979   libkwineffects1a
12980   libmarblewidget4
12981   libntrack-qt4-1
12982   libntrack0
12983   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
12984   libplasmaclock4a
12985   libplasmagenericshell4
12986   libprocesscore4a
12987   libprocessui4a
12988   libqalculate5
12989   libqedje0a
12990   libqtruby4shared2
12991   libqzion0a
12992   libruby1.8
12993   libscim8c2a
12994   libsmokekdecore4-3
12995   libsmokekdeui4-3
12996   libsmokekfile3
12997   libsmokekhtml3
12998   libsmokekio3
12999   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
13000   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
13001   libsmokekparts3
13002   libsmokektexteditor3
13003   libsmokekutils3
13004   libsmokenepomuk3
13005   libsmokephonon3
13006   libsmokeplasma3
13007   libsmokeqtcore4-3
13008   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
13009   libsmokeqtgui4-3
13010   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
13011   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
13012   libsmokeqtscript4-3
13013   libsmokeqtsql4-3
13014   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
13015   libsmokeqttest4-3
13016   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
13017   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
13018   libsmokeqtxml4-3
13019   libsmokesolid3
13020   libsmokesoprano3
13021   libtaskmanager4a
13022   libtidy-0.99-0
13023   libweather-ion4a
13024   libxklavier16
13025   libxxf86misc1
13026   okteta
13027   oxygencursors
13028   plasma-dataengines-addons
13029   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
13030   plasma-widget-lancelot
13031   plasma-widgets-addons
13032   plasma-widgets-workspace
13033   polkit-kde-1
13034   ruby1.8
13035   systemsettings
13036   update-notifier-common
13037 </p></blockquote>
13038
13039 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
13040 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
13041 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
13042 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
13043
13044       </div>
13045       <div class="tags">
13046
13047
13048         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>.
13049
13050
13051       </div>
13052     </div>
13053     <div class="padding"></div>
13054
13055     <div class="entry">
13056       <div class="title">
13057         <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>
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="date">
13060         22nd November 2010
13061       </div>
13062       <div class="body">
13063         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
13064 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
13065 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
13066 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
13067 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
13068 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
13069 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
13070 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
13071 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
13072
13073 <p>I found
13074 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
13075 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
13076 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
13077 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
13078 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
13079 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
13080
13081 <pre>
13082 #!/bin/sh
13083
13084 # Based on
13085 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
13086
13087 set -e
13088 set -x
13089
13090 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
13091     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
13092     exit 1
13093 else
13094     host="$1"
13095 fi
13096
13097 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
13098     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
13099     exit 1
13100 fi
13101
13102 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
13103 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13104 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
13105 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
13106
13107 img=$host.img
13108 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
13109 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
13110
13111 parted $img mklabel msdos
13112 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
13113 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
13114 parted $img set 1 boot on
13115
13116 modprobe dm-mod
13117 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
13118 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
13119
13120 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
13121 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
13122 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
13123
13124 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
13125 losetup -d /dev/loop0
13126 </pre>
13127
13128 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
13129 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
13130
13131 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
13132 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
13133 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
13134 seem to work just fine.</p>
13135
13136       </div>
13137       <div class="tags">
13138
13139
13140         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>.
13141
13142
13143       </div>
13144     </div>
13145     <div class="padding"></div>
13146
13147     <div class="entry">
13148       <div class="title">
13149         <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>
13150       </div>
13151       <div class="date">
13152         20th November 2010
13153       </div>
13154       <div class="body">
13155         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
13156 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13157 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
13158 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
13159
13160 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
13161 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
13162 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
13163
13164 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
13165
13166 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13167
13168 <blockquote><p>
13169   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
13170   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
13171   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
13172   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
13173   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
13174   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
13175   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
13176   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
13177   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
13178   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
13179   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13180   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13181   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
13182   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
13183   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
13184   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
13185   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13186   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
13187   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13188   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
13189   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
13190   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13191   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
13192   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
13193   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
13194   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13195   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13196   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
13197   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13198   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
13199   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
13200   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
13201   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
13202   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
13203   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
13204   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
13205   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
13206   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
13207   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
13208   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
13209   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
13210   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
13211   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
13212   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
13213   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
13214   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
13215   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
13216   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
13217   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
13218   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
13219   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
13220   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
13221   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13222   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
13223   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
13224   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
13225   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
13226   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
13227   zip
13228 </p></blockquote>
13229
13230 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
13231
13232 <blockquote><p>
13233   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
13234   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
13235   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
13236   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
13237   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
13238   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
13239   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
13240   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
13241   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
13242   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
13243   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
13244   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
13245   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
13246   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
13247   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13248   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
13249   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13250   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
13251   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
13252   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
13253   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
13254   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
13255   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
13256   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
13257   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
13258   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
13259   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
13260   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
13261   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
13262 </p></blockquote>
13263
13264 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13265
13266 <blockquote><p>
13267   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13268 </p></blockquote>
13269
13270 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13271
13272 <blockquote><p>
13273 [nothing]
13274 </p></blockquote>
13275
13276 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
13277
13278 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
13279
13280 <blockquote><p>
13281   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
13282   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13283   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
13284   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
13285   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
13286   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
13287   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13288   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
13289   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
13290   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13291   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
13292   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
13293   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
13294   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
13295   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
13296   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
13297   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
13298   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
13299   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
13300   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
13301   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
13302   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
13303   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
13304   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
13305   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
13306   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
13307   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
13308   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
13309   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
13310   ttf-sazanami-gothic
13311 </p></blockquote>
13312
13313 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
13314
13315 <blockquote><p>
13316   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
13317   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
13318   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
13319   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
13320   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
13321   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
13322   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
13323   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
13324   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
13325   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
13326   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
13327   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
13328   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
13329   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
13330   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13331   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13332   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
13333   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
13334   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13335   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
13336   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
13337   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
13338   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13339   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13340   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
13341   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
13342   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
13343   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
13344   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
13345   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
13346   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
13347   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
13348   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
13349 </p></blockquote>
13350
13351 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
13352
13353 <blockquote><p>
13354   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
13355   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
13356   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
13357   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
13358   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
13359   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
13360   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
13361 </p></blockquote>
13362
13363 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
13364
13365 <blockquote><p>
13366   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
13367 </p></blockquote>
13368
13369       </div>
13370       <div class="tags">
13371
13372
13373         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>.
13374
13375
13376       </div>
13377     </div>
13378     <div class="padding"></div>
13379
13380     <div class="entry">
13381       <div class="title">
13382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
13383       </div>
13384       <div class="date">
13385         20th November 2010
13386       </div>
13387       <div class="body">
13388         <p>Answering
13389 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
13390 call from the Gnash project</a> for
13391 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
13392 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
13393 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
13394 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
13395 releases out more often.</p>
13396
13397 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
13398 I have considered setting up a <a
13399 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
13400 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
13401 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
13402 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
13403 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
13404 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
13405 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
13406 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
13407 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
13408 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
13409 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
13410 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
13411
13412       </div>
13413       <div class="tags">
13414
13415
13416         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>.
13417
13418
13419       </div>
13420     </div>
13421     <div class="padding"></div>
13422
13423     <div class="entry">
13424       <div class="title">
13425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
13426       </div>
13427       <div class="date">
13428          9th November 2010
13429       </div>
13430       <div class="body">
13431         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
13432
13433 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
13434 3D linked in from
13435 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
13436 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
13437
13438       </div>
13439       <div class="tags">
13440
13441
13442         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>.
13443
13444
13445       </div>
13446     </div>
13447     <div class="padding"></div>
13448
13449     <div class="entry">
13450       <div class="title">
13451         <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>
13452       </div>
13453       <div class="date">
13454          7th November 2010
13455       </div>
13456       <div class="body">
13457         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
13458 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
13459 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
13460 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
13461 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
13462 working using this DVD.</p>
13463
13464 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
13465 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
13466 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
13467 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
13468 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
13469 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
13470 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
13471
13472 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
13473 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
13474 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
13475 Debian archive.</p>
13476
13477 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
13478 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
13479 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
13480 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
13481 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
13482 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
13483 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
13484 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
13485 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
13486 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
13487 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
13488 free X driver should work.</p>
13489
13490 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
13491 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
13492 DVD more useful again.</p>
13493
13494       </div>
13495       <div class="tags">
13496
13497
13498         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>.
13499
13500
13501       </div>
13502     </div>
13503     <div class="padding"></div>
13504
13505     <div class="entry">
13506       <div class="title">
13507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
13508       </div>
13509       <div class="date">
13510         24th October 2010
13511       </div>
13512       <div class="body">
13513         <p>Some updates.</p>
13514
13515 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
13516 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
13517 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
13518 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
13519 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
13520 :)</p>
13521
13522 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
13523 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
13524 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
13525 It is called
13526 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
13527 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
13528 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
13529 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
13530 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
13531 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
13532
13533 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
13534 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
13535 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
13536 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
13537 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
13538 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
13539 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
13540 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
13541 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
13542 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
13543
13544       </div>
13545       <div class="tags">
13546
13547
13548         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>.
13549
13550
13551       </div>
13552     </div>
13553     <div class="padding"></div>
13554
13555     <div class="entry">
13556       <div class="title">
13557         <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>
13558       </div>
13559       <div class="date">
13560         19th October 2010
13561       </div>
13562       <div class="body">
13563         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
13564 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
13565 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
13566 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
13567 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
13568 AVM2 flash files.</p>
13569
13570 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
13571 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
13572 following text:</P>
13573
13574 <p><blockquote>
13575
13576   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
13577   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
13578
13579   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
13580
13581   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
13582
13583   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
13584   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
13585   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
13586   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
13587   days. The project web page is available from
13588   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
13589   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
13590   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
13591
13592   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
13593   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
13594   to get this to happen.</p>
13595
13596   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
13597   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
13598
13599 </blockquote></p>
13600
13601 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
13602 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
13603 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
13604 :)</p>
13605
13606       </div>
13607       <div class="tags">
13608
13609
13610         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>.
13611
13612
13613       </div>
13614     </div>
13615     <div class="padding"></div>
13616
13617     <div class="entry">
13618       <div class="title">
13619         <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>
13620       </div>
13621       <div class="date">
13622          9th October 2010
13623       </div>
13624       <div class="body">
13625         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
13626 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
13627 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
13628 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
13629 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
13630 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
13631 robots.</p>
13632
13633 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
13634 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
13635 a few less important features too.</p>
13636
13637 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
13638 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
13639 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
13640 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
13641
13642 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
13643 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
13644 source or binary package:</p>
13645
13646 <p><ul>
13647 <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>
13648 <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>
13649 <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>
13650 </ul></p>
13651
13652 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
13653 please let me know.</p>
13654
13655       </div>
13656       <div class="tags">
13657
13658
13659         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>.
13660
13661
13662       </div>
13663     </div>
13664     <div class="padding"></div>
13665
13666     <div class="entry">
13667       <div class="title">
13668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
13669       </div>
13670       <div class="date">
13671          3rd October 2010
13672       </div>
13673       <div class="body">
13674         <p><ul>
13675
13676 <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
13677 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
13678
13679 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
13680 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
13681 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
13682
13683 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
13684 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
13685 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
13686 simple setup.
13687
13688 </ul></p>
13689
13690       </div>
13691       <div class="tags">
13692
13693
13694         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>.
13695
13696
13697       </div>
13698     </div>
13699     <div class="padding"></div>
13700
13701     <div class="entry">
13702       <div class="title">
13703         <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>
13704       </div>
13705       <div class="date">
13706          9th September 2010
13707       </div>
13708       <div class="body">
13709         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
13710 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
13711 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
13712 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
13713 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
13714 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
13715 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
13716 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
13717 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
13718
13719 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
13720 written:</p>
13721
13722 <blockquote>
13723 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
13724 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
13725 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
13726 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
13727 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
13728
13729 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
13730 standard.</p>
13731 </blockquote>
13732
13733 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
13734 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
13735 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
13736 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
13737
13738 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
13739 read
13740 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
13741 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
13742 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
13743 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
13744 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
13745 the issue.  The solution is to support the
13746 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
13747 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
13748 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
13749
13750       </div>
13751       <div class="tags">
13752
13753
13754         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>.
13755
13756
13757       </div>
13758     </div>
13759     <div class="padding"></div>
13760
13761     <div class="entry">
13762       <div class="title">
13763         <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>
13764       </div>
13765       <div class="date">
13766          4th September 2010
13767       </div>
13768       <div class="body">
13769         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
13770 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
13771 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
13772 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
13773 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
13774 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
13775 installed.</p>
13776
13777 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
13778 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
13779 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
13780 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
13781 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13782 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
13783 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
13784 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
13785 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
13786
13787 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
13788 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
13789 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
13790 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
13791 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
13792 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
13793 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
13794 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
13795 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
13796 pages they want to visit.</p>
13797
13798 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
13799 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
13800 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
13801 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
13802 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
13803 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
13804 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
13805 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
13806 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
13807 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
13808 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
13809
13810       </div>
13811       <div class="tags">
13812
13813
13814         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>.
13815
13816
13817       </div>
13818     </div>
13819     <div class="padding"></div>
13820
13821     <div class="entry">
13822       <div class="title">
13823         <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>
13824       </div>
13825       <div class="date">
13826          1st September 2010
13827       </div>
13828       <div class="body">
13829         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
13830 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
13831 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
13832 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
13833 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
13834 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
13835 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
13836 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
13837 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
13838 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
13839 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
13840 drive around.</p>
13841
13842 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
13843 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
13844
13845 <p><pre>
13846 use Spykee;
13847 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
13848 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
13849 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
13850 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
13851 $spykee->left();
13852 sleep 2;
13853 $spykee->right();
13854 sleep 2;
13855 $spykee->forward();
13856 sleep 2;
13857 $spykee->back();
13858 sleep 2;
13859 $spykee->stop();
13860 </pre></p>
13861
13862 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
13863 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
13864 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
13865 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
13866 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
13867 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
13868 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
13869 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
13870 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
13871 going. :).</p>
13872
13873 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
13874 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
13875 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
13876 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
13877
13878       </div>
13879       <div class="tags">
13880
13881
13882         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>.
13883
13884
13885       </div>
13886     </div>
13887     <div class="padding"></div>
13888
13889     <div class="entry">
13890       <div class="title">
13891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
13892       </div>
13893       <div class="date">
13894         30th August 2010
13895       </div>
13896       <div class="body">
13897         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
13898 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
13899 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
13900 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
13901 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
13902 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
13903 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
13904
13905 <pre>
13906 % ln foo bar
13907 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
13908 %
13909 </pre>
13910
13911 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
13912 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
13913 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
13914 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
13915 nevertheless. :)</p>
13916
13917 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
13918 git from
13919 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
13920
13921       </div>
13922       <div class="tags">
13923
13924
13925         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>.
13926
13927
13928       </div>
13929     </div>
13930     <div class="padding"></div>
13931
13932     <div class="entry">
13933       <div class="title">
13934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
13935       </div>
13936       <div class="date">
13937         26th August 2010
13938       </div>
13939       <div class="body">
13940         <p>My file system sematics program
13941 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
13942 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
13943 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
13944 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
13945 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
13946 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
13947 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
13948 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
13949 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
13950 script:</p>
13951
13952 <pre>
13953 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
13954   mode_t retval = 0;
13955   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
13956   if (-1 != fd) {
13957     unlink(name);
13958     struct stat statbuf;
13959     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
13960       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
13961     }
13962     close(fd);
13963   }
13964   return retval;
13965 }
13966
13967 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
13968 int test_umask(void) {
13969   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
13970
13971   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
13972   mode_t newmode;
13973   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13974     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
13975            newmode);
13976   }
13977   umask(007);
13978   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13979     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
13980            newmode);
13981   }
13982
13983   umask (orig_umask);
13984   return 0;
13985 }
13986
13987 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13988   [...]
13989   test_umask();
13990   return 0;
13991 }
13992 </pre>
13993
13994 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
13995
13996 <pre>
13997 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13998 info: testing symlink creation
13999 info: testing subdirectory creation
14000 info: testing fcntl locking
14001   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14002   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14003   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14004   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14005   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14006   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14007 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14008 </pre>
14009
14010 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14011 result:</p>
14012
14013 <pre>
14014 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14015 info: testing symlink creation
14016 info: testing subdirectory creation
14017 info: testing fcntl locking
14018   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14019   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14020   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14021   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14022   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14023   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14024 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14025   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14026   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14027 </pre>
14028
14029 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14030 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14031 directory.</p>
14032
14033 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14034 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
14035
14036 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14037 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14038 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14039
14040       </div>
14041       <div class="tags">
14042
14043
14044         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>.
14045
14046
14047       </div>
14048     </div>
14049     <div class="padding"></div>
14050
14051     <div class="entry">
14052       <div class="title">
14053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
14054       </div>
14055       <div class="date">
14056         15th August 2010
14057       </div>
14058       <div class="body">
14059         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14060 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
14061 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14062 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14063 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14064 long time.</p>
14065
14066       </div>
14067       <div class="tags">
14068
14069
14070         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>.
14071
14072
14073       </div>
14074     </div>
14075     <div class="padding"></div>
14076
14077     <div class="entry">
14078       <div class="title">
14079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
14080       </div>
14081       <div class="date">
14082          9th August 2010
14083       </div>
14084       <div class="body">
14085         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
14086 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
14087 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
14088 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
14089 generated configuration.</p>
14090
14091 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
14092 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
14093 without any manual configuration.</p>
14094
14095 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
14096 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
14097 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
14098 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
14099 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
14100 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
14101 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
14102 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
14103 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
14104 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14105 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14106 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14107 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
14108 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
14109 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
14110 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
14111 use.</p>
14112
14113 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
14114 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
14115 working properly out of the box:</p>
14116
14117 <ul>
14118 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
14119 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
14120 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
14121 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
14122 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
14123 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
14124 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
14125 </ul>
14126
14127 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
14128
14129 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
14130 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
14131 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
14132 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
14133 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
14134
14135 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
14136 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
14137 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
14138 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
14139 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
14140 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
14141 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
14142 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
14143
14144 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
14145 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
14146 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
14147 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
14148 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
14149 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
14150 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
14151 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
14152 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
14153 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
14154 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
14155 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
14156 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
14157 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
14158 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
14159 current DNS domain is used.</p>
14160
14161 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
14162 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
14163 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
14164 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
14165 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
14166 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
14167 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
14168 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
14169 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
14170 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
14171 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
14172 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
14173 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
14174
14175 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
14176 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
14177 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
14178 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
14179 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
14180 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
14181 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
14182 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
14183 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
14184 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
14185 do for now. :)</p>
14186
14187 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
14188 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
14189 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
14190 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
14191 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
14192 yet.</p>
14193
14194 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14195 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14196
14197 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
14198 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
14199 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
14200 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
14201
14202       </div>
14203       <div class="tags">
14204
14205
14206         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>.
14207
14208
14209       </div>
14210     </div>
14211     <div class="padding"></div>
14212
14213     <div class="entry">
14214       <div class="title">
14215         <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>
14216       </div>
14217       <div class="date">
14218          8th August 2010
14219       </div>
14220       <div class="body">
14221         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
14222 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
14223 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
14224 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
14225 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
14226 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
14227 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
14228
14229 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
14230 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
14231 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
14232 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
14233 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
14234 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
14235 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
14236
14237 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
14238 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
14239 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
14240 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
14241 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
14242
14243 <pre>
14244 /*
14245  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
14246  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
14247  * directory.
14248  * License: GPL v2 or later
14249  *
14250  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
14251  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
14252 */
14253
14254 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
14255 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
14256 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
14257
14258 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
14259
14260 #include &lt;errno.h>
14261 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
14262 #include &lt;stdio.h>
14263 #include &lt;string.h>
14264 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
14265 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
14266 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
14267 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
14268 #include &lt;unistd.h>
14269
14270 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
14271 /*
14272  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
14273  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
14274  * below.
14275  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
14276  */
14277 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
14278 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
14279   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
14280 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
14281   char *zErrMsg;
14282   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14283   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
14284   unlink(name);
14285   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
14286   if( rc ){
14287     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
14288     sqlite3_close(db);
14289     return -1;
14290   }
14291
14292   /* create tables */
14293   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
14294   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
14295     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
14296     sqlite3_close(db);
14297     return -1;
14298   }
14299   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
14300   sqlite3_close(db);
14301   return 0;
14302 }
14303 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14304
14305 /*
14306  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
14307  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
14308  * done in the sqlite3 library.
14309  * See also
14310  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
14311  * POSIX specification
14312  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
14313  */
14314 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
14315   struct flock fl;
14316   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
14317   unlink(name);
14318   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
14319   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
14320
14321   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
14322   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
14323   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14324   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14325   fl.l_len    = 1;
14326   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
14327   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14328
14329   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
14330   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
14331   fl.l_len    = 510;
14332   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
14333   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14334
14335   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14336   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14337   fl.l_len    = 1;
14338   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
14339   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14340
14341   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
14342   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14343   fl.l_len    = 1;
14344   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
14345   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14346
14347   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
14348   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
14349   fl.l_len    = 510;
14350   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14351
14352   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
14353   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
14354   fl.l_len    = 2;
14355   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
14356   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
14357
14358   close(fd);
14359   return 0;
14360 }
14361
14362 /*
14363  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
14364  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
14365  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
14366  * slowing down file operations.
14367  */
14368 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
14369 #define LEVELS 5
14370   char *path = strdup("test");
14371   char *dirs[LEVELS];
14372   int level;
14373   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
14374   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
14375     char *newpath = NULL;
14376     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
14377       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
14378              path, strerror(errno));
14379       break;
14380     }
14381     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
14382     free(path);
14383     path = newpath;
14384   }
14385   return 0;
14386 }
14387
14388 /*
14389  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
14390  * KDE.
14391  */
14392 int test_symlinks(void) {
14393   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
14394   unlink("symlink");
14395   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
14396     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
14397   return 0;
14398 }
14399
14400 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14401   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
14402   test_symlinks();
14403   test_subdirectory_creation();
14404 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
14405   test_sqlite_open();
14406 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
14407   test_gcompris_locking();
14408   return 0;
14409 }
14410 </pre>
14411
14412 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
14413 this:</p>
14414
14415 <pre>
14416 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14417 info: testing symlink creation
14418 info: testing subdirectory creation
14419 info: sqlite worked
14420 info: testing fcntl locking
14421   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14422   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14423   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14424   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14425   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14426   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14427 </pre>
14428
14429 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
14430 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
14431 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
14432 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
14433 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
14434 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
14435 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
14436 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
14437
14438 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
14439 it. :)</p>
14440
14441 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14442 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14443 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
14444
14445       </div>
14446       <div class="tags">
14447
14448
14449         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>.
14450
14451
14452       </div>
14453     </div>
14454     <div class="padding"></div>
14455
14456     <div class="entry">
14457       <div class="title">
14458         <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>
14459       </div>
14460       <div class="date">
14461          7th August 2010
14462       </div>
14463       <div class="body">
14464         <p>A few days ago, I
14465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
14466 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
14467 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
14468 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
14469 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
14470 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
14471 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
14472 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
14473 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
14474
14475 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
14476 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
14477 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
14478 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
14479 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
14480 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
14481 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
14482 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
14483 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
14484 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
14485 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
14486 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
14487 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
14488 gave it a IP address.</p>
14489
14490 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
14491 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
14492 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
14493 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
14494 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
14495 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
14496 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
14497 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
14498
14499 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
14500 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
14501 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
14502 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
14503 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
14504 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
14505
14506 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
14507 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
14508 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
14509 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
14510 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
14511 with UID and GID values.</p>
14512
14513 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
14514 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14515
14516       </div>
14517       <div class="tags">
14518
14519
14520         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>.
14521
14522
14523       </div>
14524     </div>
14525     <div class="padding"></div>
14526
14527     <div class="entry">
14528       <div class="title">
14529         <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>
14530       </div>
14531       <div class="date">
14532          3rd August 2010
14533       </div>
14534       <div class="body">
14535         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
14536 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
14537 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
14538 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
14539 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
14540 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
14541 servers.</p>
14542
14543 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
14544 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
14545 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
14546 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
14547 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
14548 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
14549 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
14550 .uio.no.</p>
14551
14552 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
14553 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
14554 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
14555 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
14556 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
14557 university servers.</p>
14558
14559 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
14560 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
14561 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
14562 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
14563 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
14564 uses.</p>
14565
14566       </div>
14567       <div class="tags">
14568
14569
14570         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>.
14571
14572
14573       </div>
14574     </div>
14575     <div class="padding"></div>
14576
14577     <div class="entry">
14578       <div class="title">
14579         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
14580       </div>
14581       <div class="date">
14582         27th July 2010
14583       </div>
14584       <div class="body">
14585         <p>I discovered this while doing
14586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14587 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
14588 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14589 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14590 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
14591
14592 <p>An example is from todays
14593 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14594 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14595 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
14596 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14597 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14598 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14599 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
14600
14601 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
14602
14603 <blockquote><pre>
14604 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14605  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
14606   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
14607 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14608  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14609 </pre></blockquote>
14610
14611 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14612 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
14613 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14614 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14615 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14616 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14617 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14618 of dependency loops.</p>
14619
14620 <p>Thanks to
14621 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14622 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
14623 dependencies
14624 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14625 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
14626
14627 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14628 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
14629 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
14630 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14631 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14632 it.</p>
14633
14634       </div>
14635       <div class="tags">
14636
14637
14638         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>.
14639
14640
14641       </div>
14642     </div>
14643     <div class="padding"></div>
14644
14645     <div class="entry">
14646       <div class="title">
14647         <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>
14648       </div>
14649       <div class="date">
14650         27th July 2010
14651       </div>
14652       <div class="body">
14653         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
14654 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
14655 completed.</p>
14656
14657 <blockquote>
14658 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
14659 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
14660 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
14661 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
14662 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
14663 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
14664 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
14665 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
14666
14667 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
14668 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
14669 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
14670
14671 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
14672 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
14673 much.</p>
14674
14675 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
14676
14677 <ul>
14678 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
14679 <ul>
14680   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
14681          combination with some new artwork
14682   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
14683   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
14684   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
14685   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
14686   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
14687   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
14688   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
14689   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
14690   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
14691 </ul></li>
14692 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
14693     Enabled for:
14694 <ul>
14695   <li>PAM
14696   <li>LDAP
14697   <li>IMAP
14698   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
14699 </ul>
14700 </li>
14701 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
14702 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
14703     fetched from LDAP.</li>
14704 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
14705 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
14706 </ul>
14707 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
14708
14709 <ul>
14710 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
14711     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
14712     for testing.</li>
14713 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
14714     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
14715     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
14716 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
14717 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
14718 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
14719 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
14720     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
14721 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
14722     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
14723     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
14724 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
14725     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
14726     and help out with translations.</li>
14727 </ul>
14728
14729 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
14730
14731 <ul>
14732 <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>
14733 <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>
14734 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14735 </ul>
14736 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
14737
14738 <ul>
14739 <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>
14740 <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>
14741 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14742 </ul>
14743
14744 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
14745 get closer to the final release.</p>
14746
14747 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
14748
14749 <ul>
14750 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14751 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14752 </ul>
14753
14754 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
14755 <ul>
14756 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14757 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14758 </ul>
14759 <p>How to report bugs:
14760 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
14761
14762 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
14763 </blockquote>
14764
14765       </div>
14766       <div class="tags">
14767
14768
14769         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>.
14770
14771
14772       </div>
14773     </div>
14774     <div class="padding"></div>
14775
14776     <div class="entry">
14777       <div class="title">
14778         <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>
14779       </div>
14780       <div class="date">
14781         25th July 2010
14782       </div>
14783       <div class="body">
14784         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
14785 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
14786 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
14787 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
14788 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
14789
14790 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
14791 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
14792 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
14793 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
14794 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
14795 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
14796 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
14797
14798 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
14799 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
14800 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
14801 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
14802 up. :)</p>
14803
14804 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
14805 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
14806 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
14807
14808 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
14809 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
14810 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
14811 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
14812 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
14813 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
14814 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
14815 release another day.</p>
14816
14817 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
14818 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14819
14820       </div>
14821       <div class="tags">
14822
14823
14824         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>.
14825
14826
14827       </div>
14828     </div>
14829     <div class="padding"></div>
14830
14831     <div class="entry">
14832       <div class="title">
14833         <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>
14834       </div>
14835       <div class="date">
14836         18th July 2010
14837       </div>
14838       <div class="body">
14839         <p>Thanks to
14840 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
14841 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
14842 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
14843 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
14844 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
14845 only available from the development server, until more experience is
14846 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
14847
14848 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
14849 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
14850 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
14851 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
14852 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
14853 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
14854 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
14855
14856       </div>
14857       <div class="tags">
14858
14859
14860         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>.
14861
14862
14863       </div>
14864     </div>
14865     <div class="padding"></div>
14866
14867     <div class="entry">
14868       <div class="title">
14869         <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>
14870       </div>
14871       <div class="date">
14872         17th July 2010
14873       </div>
14874       <div class="body">
14875         <p>This is a
14876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
14877 on my
14878 <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
14879 work</a> on
14880 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14881 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
14882
14883 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14884 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14885 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
14886 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
14887
14888 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14889 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14890 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
14891
14892 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
14893
14894 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14895 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14896 the web.
14897
14898 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14899 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14900 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14901 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14902 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14903 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
14904
14905 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14906 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14907 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14908 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14909 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14910 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
14911 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14912 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14913 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14914 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14915 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14916 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
14917 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14918 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14919 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
14920 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
14921
14922 <blockquote><pre>
14923 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14924   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14925   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14926   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14927   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14928   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14929   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14930
14931 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14932   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14933   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14934   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14935   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14936   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14937 </pre></blockquote>
14938
14939 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14940 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14941 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
14942 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14943 also exist.</p>
14944
14945 <blockquote><pre>
14946 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14947 objectclass: top
14948 objectclass: dnsdomain
14949 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14950 dc: tjener
14951 arecord: 10.0.2.2
14952 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14953
14954 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14955 objectclass: top
14956 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14957 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14958 dc: 2
14959 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14960 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14961 </pre></blockquote>
14962
14963 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
14964 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14965 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14966 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14967 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14968 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14969 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
14970 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
14971 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14972 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14973 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14974 instead.</p>
14975
14976 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14977 like this:</p>
14978
14979 <blockquote><pre>
14980 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14981   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14982   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14983   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14984   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14985   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14986
14987 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14988   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14989 </pre></blockquote>
14990
14991 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14992 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14993 reverse lookups.</p>
14994
14995 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14996 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14997 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
14998 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
14999
15000 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15001 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15002 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
15003
15004 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15005 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15006 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15007 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15008 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
15009
15010 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15011 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15012 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15013 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15014 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
15015
15016 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15017 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15018 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15019 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15020 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15021 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
15022
15023 <blockquote><pre>
15024 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15025     SUP top
15026     AUXILIARY
15027     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15028           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15029           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15030           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15031           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15032     ))
15033 </pre></blockquote>
15034
15035 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15036 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15037 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15038 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15039 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15040 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
15041
15042 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
15043
15044 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15045 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15046 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15047 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15048 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
15049
15050 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15051 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15052 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15053 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
15054
15055 <blockquote><pre>
15056 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15057 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15058 </pre></blockquote>
15059
15060 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15061 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15062 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
15063 search result is this entry:</p>
15064
15065 <blockquote><pre>
15066 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15067 cn: dhcp
15068 objectClass: top
15069 objectClass: dhcpServer
15070 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15071 </pre></blockquote>
15072
15073 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15074 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15075 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15076 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15077 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15078 The search result is this entry:</p>
15079
15080 <blockquote><pre>
15081 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15082 cn: DHCP Config
15083 objectClass: top
15084 objectClass: dhcpService
15085 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15086 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15087 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15088 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15089 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15090 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15091 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15092 </pre></blockquote>
15093
15094 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15095 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15096 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15097 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15098 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15099 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15100 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15101 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15102 related computer objects.</p>
15103
15104 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15105 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15106 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15107 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15108 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15109 like:</p>
15110
15111 <blockquote><pre>
15112 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15113 cn: hostname
15114 objectClass: top
15115 objectClass: dhcpHost
15116 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15117 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15118 </pre></blockquote>
15119
15120 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15121 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15122 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15123 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15124 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15125 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15126 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15127 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15128 structural object class.
15129
15130 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15131
15132 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15133 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15134 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15135 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15136 in the configuration.</p>
15137
15138 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15139 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15140 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15141 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15142 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15143 structure.</p>
15144
15145 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15146 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
15147
15148 <blockquote><pre>
15149 ou=services
15150   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15151     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15152     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15153       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15154         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15155     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15156       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15157         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15158     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15159       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15160 </pre></blockquote>
15161
15162 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15163 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15164 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15165 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
15166
15167 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15168 like this:</p>
15169
15170 <blockquote><pre>
15171 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15172 dc: hostname
15173 objectClass: top
15174 objectClass: dhcpHost
15175 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15176 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15177 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15178 arecord: 10.11.12.13
15179 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15180 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15181 </pre></blockquote>
15182
15183 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15184 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15185 auxiliary object class.</p>
15186
15187       </div>
15188       <div class="tags">
15189
15190
15191         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>.
15192
15193
15194       </div>
15195     </div>
15196     <div class="padding"></div>
15197
15198     <div class="entry">
15199       <div class="title">
15200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
15201       </div>
15202       <div class="date">
15203         14th July 2010
15204       </div>
15205       <div class="body">
15206         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15207 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15208 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15209 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15210 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
15211
15212 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15213 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
15214
15215 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15216 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
15217 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15218 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
15219 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
15220 to a slave DNS server.</p>
15221
15222 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
15223 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
15224 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
15225 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
15226 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
15227 seem to work.</p>
15228
15229 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
15230 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
15231 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
15232 this:</p>
15233
15234 <blockquote><pre>
15235   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15236   cn: hostname
15237   objectClass: dhcphost
15238   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15239   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
15240   associateddomain: hostname.intern
15241   arecord: 10.11.12.13
15242   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15243   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
15244   ldapconfigsound: Y
15245 </pre></blockquote>
15246
15247 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
15248 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
15249 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
15250 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
15251
15252 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
15253 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
15254 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
15255 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
15256 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
15257 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
15258 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
15259 might be a good place to put it.</p>
15260
15261 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15262 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15263
15264       </div>
15265       <div class="tags">
15266
15267
15268         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>.
15269
15270
15271       </div>
15272     </div>
15273     <div class="padding"></div>
15274
15275     <div class="entry">
15276       <div class="title">
15277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
15278       </div>
15279       <div class="date">
15280         11th July 2010
15281       </div>
15282       <div class="body">
15283         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
15284 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
15285 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
15286 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
15287
15288 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
15289 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
15290 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
15291 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
15292 LTSP clients.</p>
15293
15294 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
15295 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
15296 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
15297
15298 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
15299 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
15300 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
15301
15302 <blockquote><pre>
15303 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
15304 #
15305 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
15306 #
15307 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
15308 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
15309 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
15310 #
15311 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
15312 # existence of attribute names.
15313 #
15314 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
15315 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
15316 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
15317 #
15318 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
15319 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
15320 #
15321 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
15322 #     SUP top
15323 #     AUXILIARY
15324 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
15325
15326 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
15327 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
15328     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
15329     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
15330         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
15331         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
15332             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
15333             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
15334             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
15335             # bass value on to clients
15336             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
15337         done
15338     done
15339 fi
15340 </pre></blockquote>
15341
15342 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
15343 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
15344 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
15345 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
15346 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
15347
15348 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15349 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15350
15351 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
15352 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
15353 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
15354 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
15355 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
15356 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
15357
15358       </div>
15359       <div class="tags">
15360
15361
15362         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>.
15363
15364
15365       </div>
15366     </div>
15367     <div class="padding"></div>
15368
15369     <div class="entry">
15370       <div class="title">
15371         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15372       </div>
15373       <div class="date">
15374          9th July 2010
15375       </div>
15376       <div class="body">
15377         <p>Since
15378 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
15379 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
15380 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
15381 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
15382 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
15383 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
15384 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
15385 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
15386 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
15387 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
15388 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
15389 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
15390 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
15391
15392       </div>
15393       <div class="tags">
15394
15395
15396         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>.
15397
15398
15399       </div>
15400     </div>
15401     <div class="padding"></div>
15402
15403     <div class="entry">
15404       <div class="title">
15405         <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>
15406       </div>
15407       <div class="date">
15408          3rd July 2010
15409       </div>
15410       <div class="body">
15411         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
15412 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
15413 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
15414 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
15415 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
15416 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
15417 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
15418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
15419
15420 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
15421 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
15422 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
15423 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
15424 publish the difference.</p>
15425
15426 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15427
15428 <blockquote><p>
15429   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15430   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
15431   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
15432   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15433   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
15434   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15435   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
15436   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
15437 </p></blockquote>
15438
15439 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15440
15441 <blockquote><p>
15442   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
15443   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
15444   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
15445   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
15446   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
15447   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
15448   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15449   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
15450   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15451   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15452   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
15453   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
15454   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
15455   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
15456   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
15457   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
15458   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
15459   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
15460   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
15461   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
15462 </p></blockquote>
15463
15464 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15465
15466 <blockquote><p>
15467   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
15468   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
15469   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15470   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15471   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
15472   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
15473   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
15474   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15475   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15476   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15477   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15478   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
15479   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
15480   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
15481   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
15482   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
15483   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
15484   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
15485   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
15486   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
15487   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
15488 </p></blockquote>
15489
15490 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15491
15492 <blockquote><p>
15493   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15494   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15495   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15496 </p></blockquote>
15497
15498 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15499 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15500 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15501 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15502 the difference somewhat.
15503
15504       </div>
15505       <div class="tags">
15506
15507
15508         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>.
15509
15510
15511       </div>
15512     </div>
15513     <div class="padding"></div>
15514
15515     <div class="entry">
15516       <div class="title">
15517         <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>
15518       </div>
15519       <div class="date">
15520          1st July 2010
15521       </div>
15522       <div class="body">
15523         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
15524 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
15525 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
15526 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
15527 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
15528 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
15529 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
15530 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
15531 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
15532
15533 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
15534
15535 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
15536 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
15537 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
15538 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
15539 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
15540 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
15541 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
15542 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
15543 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
15544 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
15545 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
15546 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
15547 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
15548 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
15549 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
15550
15551 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
15552
15553 <blockquote><pre>
15554 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
15555 </pre></blockquote>
15556
15557 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
15558 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
15559 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
15560 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
15561 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
15562 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
15563 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
15564 on how to get this working.</p>
15565
15566 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
15567 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
15568 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
15569 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
15570 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
15571 instructions I found in the
15572 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
15573 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
15574
15575 <blockquote><pre>
15576         debug-level             0
15577         reload-count            unlimited
15578         paranoia                no
15579
15580         enable-cache            passwd          yes
15581         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
15582         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
15583         suggested-size          passwd          211
15584         check-files             passwd          yes
15585         persistent              passwd          yes
15586         shared                  passwd          yes
15587         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
15588         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
15589
15590         enable-cache            group           yes
15591         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
15592         negative-time-to-live   group           20
15593         suggested-size          group           211
15594         check-files             group           yes
15595         persistent              group           yes
15596         shared                  group           yes
15597         max-db-size             group           33554432
15598         auto-propagate          group           yes
15599
15600         enable-cache            hosts           no
15601         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
15602         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
15603         suggested-size          hosts           211
15604         check-files             hosts           yes
15605         persistent              hosts           yes
15606         shared                  hosts           yes
15607         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
15608
15609         enable-cache            services        yes
15610         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
15611         negative-time-to-live   services        20
15612         suggested-size          services        211
15613         check-files             services        yes
15614         persistent              services        yes
15615         shared                  services        yes
15616         max-db-size             services        33554432
15617 </pre></blockquote>
15618
15619 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
15620 automatically like the one provided in
15621 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
15622 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
15623 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
15624 look like this:</p>
15625
15626 <blockquote><pre>
15627 passwd:         files ldap
15628 group:          files ldap
15629 shadow:         files ldap
15630 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
15631 networks:       files
15632 protocols:      files
15633 services:       files
15634 ethers:         files
15635 rpc:            files
15636 netgroup:       files ldap
15637 </pre></blockquote>
15638
15639 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
15640 shadow and netgroup.</p>
15641
15642 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
15643 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
15644 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
15645 attributes cached.
15646
15647 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
15648   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
15649
15650 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
15651 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
15652 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
15653 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
15654 discovered sssd.</p>
15655
15656 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
15657
15658 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
15659 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
15660 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
15661 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
15662 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
15663 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
15664 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
15665 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
15666 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
15667 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
15668 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
15669 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
15670 version 1.2 is now in testing.
15671
15672 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
15673 roaming setup I want</p>
15674
15675 <blockquote><pre>
15676 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
15677 </pre></blockquote>
15678
15679 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
15680 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
15681
15682 <blockquote><pre>
15683 [sssd]
15684 config_file_version = 2
15685 reconnection_retries = 3
15686 sbus_timeout = 30
15687 services = nss, pam
15688 domains = INTERN
15689
15690 [nss]
15691 filter_groups = root
15692 filter_users = root
15693 reconnection_retries = 3
15694
15695 [pam]
15696 reconnection_retries = 3
15697
15698 [domain/INTERN]
15699 enumerate = false
15700 cache_credentials = true
15701
15702 id_provider = ldap
15703 auth_provider = ldap
15704 chpass_provider = ldap
15705
15706 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
15707 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15708 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
15709 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
15710 </pre></blockquote>
15711
15712 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
15713 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
15714
15715 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
15716 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
15717 modify it manually.</p>
15718
15719 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15720 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15721
15722       </div>
15723       <div class="tags">
15724
15725
15726         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>.
15727
15728
15729       </div>
15730     </div>
15731     <div class="padding"></div>
15732
15733     <div class="entry">
15734       <div class="title">
15735         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15736       </div>
15737       <div class="date">
15738         28th June 2010
15739       </div>
15740       <div class="body">
15741         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15742 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15743 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
15744 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15745 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
15746 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15747 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
15748 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15749 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
15750 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
15751
15752 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15753 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15754 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15755 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15756 released.</p>
15757
15758 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
15759 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15760 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
15761 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
15762
15763 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15764 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15765
15766 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15767 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
15768 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15769 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
15770 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
15771
15772       </div>
15773       <div class="tags">
15774
15775
15776         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>.
15777
15778
15779       </div>
15780     </div>
15781     <div class="padding"></div>
15782
15783     <div class="entry">
15784       <div class="title">
15785         <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>
15786       </div>
15787       <div class="date">
15788         24th June 2010
15789       </div>
15790       <div class="body">
15791         <p>A while back, I
15792 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15793 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15794 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15795 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
15796
15797 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15798 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15799 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15800 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
15801
15802 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15803 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15804 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15805 Debian Edu.</p>
15806
15807 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15808 the
15809 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15810 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15811 available today from IETF.</p>
15812
15813 <pre>
15814 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
15815 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
15816 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
15817  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15818         NAME 'dhcpHost'
15819         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15820 -       SUP top
15821 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
15822         MUST cn
15823         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15824         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15825 </pre>
15826
15827 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15828 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15829 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
15830
15831 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15832 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15833
15834       </div>
15835       <div class="tags">
15836
15837
15838         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>.
15839
15840
15841       </div>
15842     </div>
15843     <div class="padding"></div>
15844
15845     <div class="entry">
15846       <div class="title">
15847         <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>
15848       </div>
15849       <div class="date">
15850         16th June 2010
15851       </div>
15852       <div class="body">
15853         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15854 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
15855 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15856 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15857 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15858 this:
15859
15860 <blockquote><pre>
15861 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15862 tasksel --new-install
15863 </pre></blockquote>
15864
15865 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15866 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15867 any output what so ever.
15868
15869 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15870 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15871 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15872 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15873 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15874 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
15875 code like this:
15876
15877 <blockquote><pre>
15878 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15879 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15880 $cmd
15881 </pre></blockquote>
15882
15883 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
15884 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15885 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15886 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15887 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15888 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15889 installation.</p>
15890
15891 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15892 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15893 like this.</p>
15894
15895       </div>
15896       <div class="tags">
15897
15898
15899         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>.
15900
15901
15902       </div>
15903     </div>
15904     <div class="padding"></div>
15905
15906     <div class="entry">
15907       <div class="title">
15908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
15909       </div>
15910       <div class="date">
15911         13th June 2010
15912       </div>
15913       <div class="body">
15914         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
15915 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
15916 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
15917 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
15918 pages.</p>
15919
15920 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
15921 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
15922 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
15923 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
15924 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
15925 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
15926 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
15927 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
15928 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
15929 see how the project is doing.</p>
15930
15931 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
15932 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
15933 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
15934 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
15935 Windows.  This is great.</p>
15936
15937       </div>
15938       <div class="tags">
15939
15940
15941         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>.
15942
15943
15944       </div>
15945     </div>
15946     <div class="padding"></div>
15947
15948     <div class="entry">
15949       <div class="title">
15950         <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>
15951       </div>
15952       <div class="date">
15953         13th June 2010
15954       </div>
15955       <div class="body">
15956         <p>My
15957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
15958 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15959 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15960 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15961 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15962 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
15963 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15964
15965 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15966 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
15967 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15968 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15969 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15970 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15971 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15972 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15973
15974 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15975 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15976 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15977 too surprising.</p>
15978
15979 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15980 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
15981 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
15982 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15983 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15984 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
15985 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15986 continue.</p>
15987
15988 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15989 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15990   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15991   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15992   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15993   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15994   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15995   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15996   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15997   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15998   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15999   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16000   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16001   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16002   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16003   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16004   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16005   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16006   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16007   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16008   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16009   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16010   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16011   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16012   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16013   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16014   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16015   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16016   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16017   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
16018
16019 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
16020
16021 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16022   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16023   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16024   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16025   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16026   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16027   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16028   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16029   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16030   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16031   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16032   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16033   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16034   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16035   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16036   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16037   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16038   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16039   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16040   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16041   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16042   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16043   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16044   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16045   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16046   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16047   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16048   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16049   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16050   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16051   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16052   zip</p>
16053
16054 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
16055
16056 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16057   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16058   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16059   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16060   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16061   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16062   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16063   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16064   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16065   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16066   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16067   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16068   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16069   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16070   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16071   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16072   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16073   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16074   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16075   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16076   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16077   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16078   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16079   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16080   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16081   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16082   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16083   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
16084
16085 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
16086 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16087   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16088   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16089   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16090   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16091   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16092   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16093   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16094   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16095   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16096   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16097   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16098   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16099   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16100   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16101   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16102   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16103   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16104   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16105   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16106   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16107   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16108   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16109   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16110   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16111   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16112   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16113   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16114   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16115   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16116   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16117   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16118   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16119   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16120   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16121   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16122   xulrunner-1.9</p>
16123
16124
16125       </div>
16126       <div class="tags">
16127
16128
16129         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>.
16130
16131
16132       </div>
16133     </div>
16134     <div class="padding"></div>
16135
16136     <div class="entry">
16137       <div class="title">
16138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16139       </div>
16140       <div class="date">
16141         11th June 2010
16142       </div>
16143       <div class="body">
16144         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16145 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
16146 have been discovered and reported in the process
16147 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16148 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16149 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
16150 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16151 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16152
16153 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16154 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16155 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16156 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16157 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16158 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16159
16160 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16161 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16162 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16163 is created.  The bug report
16164 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16165 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16166 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
16167 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16168 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
16169 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
16170 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16171 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16172 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
16173 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16174 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16175 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16176 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16177
16178 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
16179 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16180 trick:</p>
16181
16182 <blockquote><pre>
16183 #!/bin/sh
16184 set -ex
16185
16186 if [ "$1" ] ; then
16187     desktop=$1
16188 else
16189     desktop=gnome
16190 fi
16191
16192 from=lenny
16193 to=squeeze
16194
16195 exec &lt; /dev/null
16196 unset LANG
16197 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16198 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16199 fuser -mv .
16200 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16201 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16202 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
16203 #!/bin/sh
16204 exit 101
16205 EOF
16206 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16207 exit_cleanup() {
16208     umount $tmpdir/proc
16209 }
16210 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16211 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16212 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16213
16214 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16215
16216 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
16217 # to return the correct answers.
16218 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16219     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16220
16221 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16222 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16223     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
16224 #!/bin/sh
16225 exit 2
16226 EOF
16227     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16228 done
16229
16230 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16231 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16232 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16233 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16234
16235 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16236 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16237 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16238 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16239 fuser -mv
16240 </pre></blockquote>
16241
16242 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16243 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16244 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16245 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
16246 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16247 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
16248
16249 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16250 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16251 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
16252 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
16253 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16254 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
16255 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
16256
16257 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16258 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16259 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16260 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16261 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16262 packages.</p>
16263
16264       </div>
16265       <div class="tags">
16266
16267
16268         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>.
16269
16270
16271       </div>
16272     </div>
16273     <div class="padding"></div>
16274
16275     <div class="entry">
16276       <div class="title">
16277         <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>
16278       </div>
16279       <div class="date">
16280          6th June 2010
16281       </div>
16282       <div class="body">
16283         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16284 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16285 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
16286 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16287 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
16288 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16289 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
16290
16291 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16292 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16293 COLUMNS):</p>
16294
16295 <blockquote><pre>
16296 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
16297 previous=N
16298 PREVLEVEL=
16299 RUNLEVEL=
16300 runlevel=S
16301 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16302 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
16303 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16304 </pre></blockquote>
16305
16306 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16307 script.</p>
16308
16309 <blockquote><pre>
16310 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
16311 previous=N
16312 PREVLEVEL=N
16313 RUNLEVEL=S
16314 runlevel=S
16315 </pre></blockquote>
16316
16317 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16318 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
16319 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
16320
16321 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16322 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16323 choice.</p>
16324
16325       </div>
16326       <div class="tags">
16327
16328
16329         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>.
16330
16331
16332       </div>
16333     </div>
16334     <div class="padding"></div>
16335
16336     <div class="entry">
16337       <div class="title">
16338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
16339       </div>
16340       <div class="date">
16341          6th June 2010
16342       </div>
16343       <div class="body">
16344         <p>Via the
16345 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
16346 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
16347 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
16348 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
16349 following the standards wars of today.</p>
16350
16351       </div>
16352       <div class="tags">
16353
16354
16355         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>.
16356
16357
16358       </div>
16359     </div>
16360     <div class="padding"></div>
16361
16362     <div class="entry">
16363       <div class="title">
16364         <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>
16365       </div>
16366       <div class="date">
16367          3rd June 2010
16368       </div>
16369       <div class="body">
16370         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16371 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
16372 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
16373 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
16374 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
16375
16376 <blockquote><pre>
16377 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
16378   vendor                    count
16379   Dell Computer Corporation     1
16380     PowerEdge 1750              1
16381   IBM                           1
16382     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
16383   Intel                         2
16384   [no-dmi-info]                 3
16385 maintainer:~#
16386 </pre></blockquote>
16387
16388 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
16389 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
16390 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
16391 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
16392 option to list the individual machines.</p>
16393
16394 <p>A larger list is
16395 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
16396 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
16397 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
16398 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
16399 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
16400 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
16401 collector.</p>
16402
16403       </div>
16404       <div class="tags">
16405
16406
16407         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>.
16408
16409
16410       </div>
16411     </div>
16412     <div class="padding"></div>
16413
16414     <div class="entry">
16415       <div class="title">
16416         <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>
16417       </div>
16418       <div class="date">
16419          1st June 2010
16420       </div>
16421       <div class="body">
16422         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
16423 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
16424 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
16425 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
16426 wait.</p>
16427
16428 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
16429 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
16430 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
16431 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
16432 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
16433 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
16434
16435 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
16436 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
16437 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
16438 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
16439 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
16440 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
16441 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
16442 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
16443
16444 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
16445
16446       </div>
16447       <div class="tags">
16448
16449
16450         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>.
16451
16452
16453       </div>
16454     </div>
16455     <div class="padding"></div>
16456
16457     <div class="entry">
16458       <div class="title">
16459         <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>
16460       </div>
16461       <div class="date">
16462         27th May 2010
16463       </div>
16464       <div class="body">
16465         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
16466 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
16467 issues are known and should be solved:
16468
16469 <p><ul>
16470
16471 <li>The wicd package seen to
16472 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
16473 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
16474 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
16475 seem to be on the case.</li>
16476
16477 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
16478 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
16479 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
16480 maintainer is on the case.</li>
16481
16482 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
16483 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
16484 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
16485 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
16486 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
16487 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
16488 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
16489 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
16490
16491 </ul></p>
16492
16493 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
16494 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
16495 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
16496 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
16497
16498 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16499 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16500 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16501 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16502
16503 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
16504
16505       </div>
16506       <div class="tags">
16507
16508
16509         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>.
16510
16511
16512       </div>
16513     </div>
16514     <div class="padding"></div>
16515
16516     <div class="entry">
16517       <div class="title">
16518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
16519       </div>
16520       <div class="date">
16521         22nd May 2010
16522       </div>
16523       <div class="body">
16524         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
16525 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
16526 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
16527 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
16528
16529 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
16530 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
16531 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
16532 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
16533 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
16534 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
16535 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
16536 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
16537 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
16538 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
16539 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
16540 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
16541 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
16542 going to work.</p>
16543
16544 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
16545 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
16546 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
16547 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16548 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
16549 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16550 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
16551 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16552 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16553 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16554 Edu.</p>
16555
16556 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16557 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16558 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16559 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
16560 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16561 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
16562
16563 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16564 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
16565
16566       </div>
16567       <div class="tags">
16568
16569
16570         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>.
16571
16572
16573       </div>
16574     </div>
16575     <div class="padding"></div>
16576
16577     <div class="entry">
16578       <div class="title">
16579         <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>
16580       </div>
16581       <div class="date">
16582         19th May 2010
16583       </div>
16584       <div class="body">
16585         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
16586 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
16587 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
16588 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
16589 into unstable.  The
16590 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
16591 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
16592 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
16593 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
16594 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16595 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
16596 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
16597
16598 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
16599 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
16600 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
16601 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
16602 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
16603 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
16604 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
16605 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
16606
16607 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
16608 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
16609 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
16610 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
16611 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
16612 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
16613 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
16614
16615 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
16616 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
16617 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
16618 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
16619 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
16620 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
16621 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
16622 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
16623 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
16624 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
16625 on the home directory servers.</p>
16626
16627 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
16628 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
16629 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
16630 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
16631 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
16632 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
16633
16634 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16635 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16636
16637       </div>
16638       <div class="tags">
16639
16640
16641         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>.
16642
16643
16644       </div>
16645     </div>
16646     <div class="padding"></div>
16647
16648     <div class="entry">
16649       <div class="title">
16650         <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>
16651       </div>
16652       <div class="date">
16653         14th May 2010
16654       </div>
16655       <div class="body">
16656         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16657 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16658 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16659 expected, if I am to believe the
16660 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16661 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16662 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16663 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
16664 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16665 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16666 version.</p>
16667
16668 More information about
16669 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16670 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
16671 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16672 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16673
16674 <blockquote><pre>
16675 CONCURRENCY=none
16676 </pre></blockquote>
16677
16678 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16679 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16681 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16682
16683       </div>
16684       <div class="tags">
16685
16686
16687         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>.
16688
16689
16690       </div>
16691     </div>
16692     <div class="padding"></div>
16693
16694     <div class="entry">
16695       <div class="title">
16696         <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>
16697       </div>
16698       <div class="date">
16699         14th May 2010
16700       </div>
16701       <div class="body">
16702         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16703 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16704 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16705 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16706 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
16707 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16708 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
16709 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
16710
16711 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16712 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
16713 this on the collector host:</p>
16714
16715 <blockquote><pre>
16716 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16717 </pre></blockquote>
16718
16719 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16720 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
16721
16722 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16723 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16724 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16725 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
16726 written yet.</p>
16727
16728       </div>
16729       <div class="tags">
16730
16731
16732         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>.
16733
16734
16735       </div>
16736     </div>
16737     <div class="padding"></div>
16738
16739     <div class="entry">
16740       <div class="title">
16741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
16742       </div>
16743       <div class="date">
16744         13th May 2010
16745       </div>
16746       <div class="body">
16747         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16748 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
16749 has been
16750 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
16751
16752 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
16753 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16754 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
16755 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16756 based boot system.  Tollef is
16757 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
16758 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
16759 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16760 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16761 at the moment do not.</p>
16762
16763 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16764 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16765 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
16766 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16767 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16768 way forward.</p>
16769
16770 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16771 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16772 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16773 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16774 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16775 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
16776 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16777 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16778 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
16779
16780       </div>
16781       <div class="tags">
16782
16783
16784         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>.
16785
16786
16787       </div>
16788     </div>
16789     <div class="padding"></div>
16790
16791     <div class="entry">
16792       <div class="title">
16793         <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>
16794       </div>
16795       <div class="date">
16796          6th May 2010
16797       </div>
16798       <div class="body">
16799         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16800 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16801 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
16802 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16803 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16804 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16805 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16806
16807 <blockquote><pre>
16808 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16809 </pre></blockquote>
16810
16811 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16812 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16813 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16814 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
16815 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16816 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16817 make this happen.</p>
16818
16819 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
16820 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16821 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16822 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
16823 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
16824
16825 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16826 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
16827 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
16828 fix the remaining issues.</p>
16829
16830 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16831 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16832 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16833 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16834
16835       </div>
16836       <div class="tags">
16837
16838
16839         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>.
16840
16841
16842       </div>
16843     </div>
16844     <div class="padding"></div>
16845
16846     <div class="entry">
16847       <div class="title">
16848         <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>
16849       </div>
16850       <div class="date">
16851          2nd May 2010
16852       </div>
16853       <div class="body">
16854         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
16855 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
16856 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
16857
16858 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
16859 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
16860 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
16861 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
16862 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
16863
16864 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
16865 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
16866
16867 <blockquote><pre>
16868 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16869 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
16870 Password expires                                        : never
16871 Password inactive                                       : never
16872 Account expires                                         : never
16873 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16874 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
16875 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16876 root@tjener:~#
16877 </pre></blockquote>
16878
16879 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
16880 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
16881 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
16882 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
16883 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
16884 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
16885
16886 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
16887 intended:</p>
16888
16889 <blockquote><pre>
16890 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
16891 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16892 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
16893 Password expires                                        : never
16894 Password inactive                                       : never
16895 Account expires                                         : never
16896 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16897 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
16898 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16899 root@tjener:~#
16900 </pre></blockquote>
16901
16902 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
16903 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
16904 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
16905
16906 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
16907 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
16908
16909 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
16910 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16911
16912 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
16913 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
16914 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
16915 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
16916 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
16917 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
16918 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
16919
16920 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
16921 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
16922 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
16923 change.</p>
16924
16925       </div>
16926       <div class="tags">
16927
16928
16929         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>.
16930
16931
16932       </div>
16933     </div>
16934     <div class="padding"></div>
16935
16936     <div class="entry">
16937       <div class="title">
16938         <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>
16939       </div>
16940       <div class="date">
16941         28th April 2010
16942       </div>
16943       <div class="body">
16944         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
16945 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
16946 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
16947 and go.</p>
16948
16949 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
16950 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
16951 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
16952 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
16953
16954 <ul>
16955
16956  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
16957    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
16958    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
16959    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
16960    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
16961    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
16962    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
16963    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
16964    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
16965    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
16966    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
16967    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
16968
16969  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
16970    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
16971    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
16972    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
16973    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16974    or the Fedora developed
16975    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
16976    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
16977
16978  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
16979    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
16980    directory, using unison.</li>
16981
16982  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
16983    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
16984    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
16985    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
16986    implemented.</li>
16987
16988  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
16989    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
16990
16991  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
16992    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
16993    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
16994
16995 </ul>
16996
16997 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
16998 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
16999 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17000 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17001 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
17002 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17003 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17004 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17005 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
17006
17007 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17008 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17009
17010       </div>
17011       <div class="tags">
17012
17013
17014         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>.
17015
17016
17017       </div>
17018     </div>
17019     <div class="padding"></div>
17020
17021     <div class="entry">
17022       <div class="title">
17023         <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>
17024       </div>
17025       <div class="date">
17026         19th April 2010
17027       </div>
17028       <div class="body">
17029         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17030 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17031 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17032 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17033 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17034 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
17035 restrictions on the web, for example from
17036 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
17037 epub-version from
17038 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
17039 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
17040 strongly recommend this book.</p>
17041
17042       </div>
17043       <div class="tags">
17044
17045
17046         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>.
17047
17048
17049       </div>
17050     </div>
17051     <div class="padding"></div>
17052
17053     <div class="entry">
17054       <div class="title">
17055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
17056       </div>
17057       <div class="date">
17058         14th April 2010
17059       </div>
17060       <div class="body">
17061         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
17062 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17063 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17064 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17065 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17066 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17067 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17068 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17069 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
17070
17071 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17072 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17073 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17074 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17075 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
17076
17077 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17078 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
17079
17080 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17081 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
17082 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
17083 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
17084 to work properly.</p>
17085
17086 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
17087 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
17088 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
17089 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
17090 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
17091 time.</p>
17092
17093 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
17094 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
17095 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
17096 up in a few days.</p>
17097
17098       </div>
17099       <div class="tags">
17100
17101
17102         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>.
17103
17104
17105       </div>
17106     </div>
17107     <div class="padding"></div>
17108
17109     <div class="entry">
17110       <div class="title">
17111         <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>
17112       </div>
17113       <div class="date">
17114          6th March 2010
17115       </div>
17116       <div class="body">
17117         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17118 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17119 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17120 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
17121 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17122 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
17123
17124 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17125 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17126 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
17127 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
17128
17129 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17130 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17131 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17132 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17133 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17134 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
17135
17136       </div>
17137       <div class="tags">
17138
17139
17140         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>.
17141
17142
17143       </div>
17144     </div>
17145     <div class="padding"></div>
17146
17147     <div class="entry">
17148       <div class="title">
17149         <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>
17150       </div>
17151       <div class="date">
17152         11th February 2010
17153       </div>
17154       <div class="body">
17155         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
17156 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
17157 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
17158 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
17159 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
17160 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
17161 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
17162
17163 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
17164
17165 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
17166 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
17167 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
17168 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
17169
17170       </div>
17171       <div class="tags">
17172
17173
17174         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>.
17175
17176
17177       </div>
17178     </div>
17179     <div class="padding"></div>
17180
17181     <div class="entry">
17182       <div class="title">
17183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
17184       </div>
17185       <div class="date">
17186         27th January 2010
17187       </div>
17188       <div class="body">
17189         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
17190 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
17191 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
17192 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
17193 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
17194 further.</p>
17195
17196 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
17197 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
17198 configured to be a server for the
17199 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
17200 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
17201 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
17202 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
17203 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
17204 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
17205 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
17206 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
17207 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
17208 and Nagios configuration.</p>
17209
17210 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
17211 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
17212 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
17213 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
17214
17215 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
17216 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
17217 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
17218 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
17219 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
17220 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
17221 the machine.</p>
17222
17223 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
17224 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
17225 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
17226 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
17227
17228 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
17229 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
17230 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
17231 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
17232 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
17233 everything is taken care of.</p>
17234
17235       </div>
17236       <div class="tags">
17237
17238
17239         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>.
17240
17241
17242       </div>
17243     </div>
17244     <div class="padding"></div>
17245
17246     <div class="entry">
17247       <div class="title">
17248         <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>
17249       </div>
17250       <div class="date">
17251         12th August 2009
17252       </div>
17253       <div class="body">
17254         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
17255 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
17256 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
17257 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
17258
17259 <table>
17260 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17261 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17262 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
17263 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
17264 </table>
17265
17266 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
17267 got these numbers:</p>
17268
17269 <table>
17270 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17271 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
17272 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
17273 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
17274 </table>
17275
17276 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
17277
17278 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
17279 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
17280 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
17281 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
17282 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
17283
17284
17285 <table>
17286 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17287 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
17288 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
17289 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
17290 </table>
17291
17292 <p>And with 'site:no':
17293
17294 <table>
17295 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
17296 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
17297 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
17298 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
17299 </table>
17300
17301 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
17302 numbers.</p>
17303
17304       </div>
17305       <div class="tags">
17306
17307
17308         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>.
17309
17310
17311       </div>
17312     </div>
17313     <div class="padding"></div>
17314
17315     <div class="entry">
17316       <div class="title">
17317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
17318       </div>
17319       <div class="date">
17320          8th August 2009
17321       </div>
17322       <div class="body">
17323         <p>According to <a
17324 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
17325 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
17326 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
17327 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
17328 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
17329 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
17330 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
17331 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
17332 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
17333 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
17334
17335 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
17336 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
17337 seminar this autumn.</p>
17338
17339       </div>
17340       <div class="tags">
17341
17342
17343         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>.
17344
17345
17346       </div>
17347     </div>
17348     <div class="padding"></div>
17349
17350     <div class="entry">
17351       <div class="title">
17352         <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>
17353       </div>
17354       <div class="date">
17355         27th July 2009
17356       </div>
17357       <div class="body">
17358         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
17359 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
17360 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
17361 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
17362 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
17363 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
17364 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
17365
17366 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
17367 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
17368 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
17369
17370       </div>
17371       <div class="tags">
17372
17373
17374         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>.
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/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
17384       </div>
17385       <div class="date">
17386         22nd July 2009
17387       </div>
17388       <div class="body">
17389         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
17390 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
17391 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
17392 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
17393 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
17394 the package up to date.</p>
17395
17396 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
17397 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
17398 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
17399 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
17400 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
17401 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
17402 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
17403 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
17404 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
17405 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
17406 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
17407 working on the future release.</p>
17408
17409 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
17410 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
17411
17412       </div>
17413       <div class="tags">
17414
17415
17416         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>.
17417
17418
17419       </div>
17420     </div>
17421     <div class="padding"></div>
17422
17423     <div class="entry">
17424       <div class="title">
17425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
17426       </div>
17427       <div class="date">
17428         24th June 2009
17429       </div>
17430       <div class="body">
17431         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
17432 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
17433 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
17434 funded
17435 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
17436 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
17437 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
17438 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
17439 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
17440 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
17441
17442 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
17443 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
17444 boot:</p>
17445
17446 <ul>
17447
17448 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
17449
17450 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
17451    clock is in UTC.</li>
17452
17453 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
17454    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
17455    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
17456
17457 </ul>
17458
17459 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
17460 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
17461 Villegas</a>.
17462
17463 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
17464 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
17465 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
17466 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
17467 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
17468 using this.</p>
17469
17470 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
17471 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
17472 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
17473 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
17474 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
17475 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
17476 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
17477
17478       </div>
17479       <div class="tags">
17480
17481
17482         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>.
17483
17484
17485       </div>
17486     </div>
17487     <div class="padding"></div>
17488
17489     <div class="entry">
17490       <div class="title">
17491         <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>
17492       </div>
17493       <div class="date">
17494          2nd May 2009
17495       </div>
17496       <div class="body">
17497         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
17498 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
17499 do not yet know them.</p>
17500
17501 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
17502 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
17503 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
17504 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
17505 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
17506 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
17507 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
17508 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
17509 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
17510 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
17511 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
17512
17513 <p>The second one is
17514 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
17515 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
17516 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
17517 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
17518 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
17519 and the company behind it is running
17520 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
17521 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
17522 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
17523 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
17524 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
17525 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
17526 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
17527 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
17528
17529 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
17530 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
17531 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
17532 surrounded by today.</p>
17533
17534       </div>
17535       <div class="tags">
17536
17537
17538         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>.
17539
17540
17541       </div>
17542     </div>
17543     <div class="padding"></div>
17544
17545     <div class="entry">
17546       <div class="title">
17547         <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>
17548       </div>
17549       <div class="date">
17550         28th April 2009
17551       </div>
17552       <div class="body">
17553         <p>Julien Blache
17554 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
17555 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
17556 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17557 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17558 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
17559 properties.</p>
17560
17561       </div>
17562       <div class="tags">
17563
17564
17565         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>.
17566
17567
17568       </div>
17569     </div>
17570     <div class="padding"></div>
17571
17572     <div class="entry">
17573       <div class="title">
17574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
17575       </div>
17576       <div class="date">
17577          5th April 2009
17578       </div>
17579       <div class="body">
17580         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
17581 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
17582 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
17583 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
17584 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
17585 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
17586 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
17587 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
17588
17589 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
17590 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
17591 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
17592   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17593   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
17594
17595 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
17596 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
17597 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
17598 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
17599
17600 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
17601 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
17602 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
17603 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
17604
17605 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
17606 set -e
17607 URL="$1"
17608 SAVEFILE="$2"
17609 DURATION="$3"
17610 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
17611   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17612   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
17613 pid=$!
17614 sleep $DURATION
17615 kill $pid
17616 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
17617
17618       </div>
17619       <div class="tags">
17620
17621
17622         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>.
17623
17624
17625       </div>
17626     </div>
17627     <div class="padding"></div>
17628
17629     <div class="entry">
17630       <div class="title">
17631         <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>
17632       </div>
17633       <div class="date">
17634         30th March 2009
17635       </div>
17636       <div class="body">
17637         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17638 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
17639 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17640 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17641 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17642 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17643 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17644 application.</p>
17645
17646 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17647 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
17648 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17649 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
17650 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17651 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17652 blocked from doing so.</p>
17653
17654 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17655 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17656 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17657 requirements change.</p>
17658
17659 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17660 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17661 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
17662
17663       </div>
17664       <div class="tags">
17665
17666
17667         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>.
17668
17669
17670       </div>
17671     </div>
17672     <div class="padding"></div>
17673
17674     <div class="entry">
17675       <div class="title">
17676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
17677       </div>
17678       <div class="date">
17679         29th March 2009
17680       </div>
17681       <div class="body">
17682         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17683 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
17684 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17685 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
17686 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17687 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
17688 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17689 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
17690 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17691 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
17692 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
17693 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17694 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
17695 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
17696 now. :)</p>
17697
17698       </div>
17699       <div class="tags">
17700
17701
17702         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>.
17703
17704
17705       </div>
17706     </div>
17707     <div class="padding"></div>
17708
17709     <div class="entry">
17710       <div class="title">
17711         <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>
17712       </div>
17713       <div class="date">
17714         29th March 2009
17715       </div>
17716       <div class="body">
17717         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17718 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17719 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
17720 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
17721 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17722 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
17723
17724 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
17725 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17726 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17727 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
17728 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17729 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17730 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17731 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
17732 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17733 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17734 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17735 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
17736 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
17737
17738 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17739 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17740 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17741 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
17742
17743 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17744 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
17745
17746 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17747 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
17748 new IETF work group?</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/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
17764       </div>
17765       <div class="date">
17766         28th February 2009
17767       </div>
17768       <div class="body">
17769         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
17770 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
17771 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
17772 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
17773 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
17774 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
17775 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
17776 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
17777 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
17778 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
17779 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
17780 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
17781 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
17782 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
17783 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
17784 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
17785 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
17786 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
17787 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
17788 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
17789 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
17790 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
17791 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
17792 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
17793 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
17794 machine.</p>
17795
17796 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
17797 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
17798 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
17799 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
17800 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
17801 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
17802 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
17803
17804 <pre>
17805 use LWP::Simple;
17806 use POSIX;
17807 use WWW::Mechanize;
17808 use Date::Parse;
17809 [...]
17810 sub get_support_info {
17811     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
17812     my $str;
17813
17814     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
17815         # fetch website from Dell support
17816         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";
17817         my $webpage = get($url);
17818         return undef unless ($webpage);
17819
17820         my $daysleft = -1;
17821         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
17822         foreach my $line (@lines) {
17823             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
17824             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17825             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
17826
17827             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
17828             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
17829             my $lastend = "";
17830             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
17831                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
17832
17833                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17834                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17835                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17836                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
17837                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
17838                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
17839                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
17840             }
17841             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17842             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17843                 if ($lastend lt $today);
17844         }
17845     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
17846         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
17847         my $url =
17848             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
17849         $mech->get($url);
17850         my $fields = {
17851             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
17852             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
17853             'country' => 'NO',
17854             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
17855             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
17856         };
17857         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
17858                             fields      => $fields );
17859         # Next step is screen scraping
17860         my $content = $mech->content();
17861
17862         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17863         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17864         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17865         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17866
17867         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17868
17869         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
17870             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
17871                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
17872             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
17873             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17874                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17875             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17876                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
17877
17878             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
17879
17880             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17881                 if ($end lt $today);
17882         }
17883     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
17884         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
17885         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
17886         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
17887             my $content =
17888                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
17889             if ($content) {
17890                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17891                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17892                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17893                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17894
17895                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
17896                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
17897
17898                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
17899
17900                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17901                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17902                     if ($end lt $today);
17903             }
17904         }
17905     }
17906     return $str;
17907 }
17908 </pre>
17909
17910 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
17911 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
17912 from dmidecode.</p>
17913
17914 <pre>
17915 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
17916                        "447707-B21");
17917 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
17918 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
17919                        "1234567");
17920 </pre>
17921
17922 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
17923 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
17924
17925 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
17926 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
17927 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
17928 do so.</p>
17929
17930       </div>
17931       <div class="tags">
17932
17933
17934         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>.
17935
17936
17937       </div>
17938     </div>
17939     <div class="padding"></div>
17940
17941     <div class="entry">
17942       <div class="title">
17943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
17944       </div>
17945       <div class="date">
17946         20th February 2009
17947       </div>
17948       <div class="body">
17949         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
17950 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
17951 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
17952 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
17953 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
17954 the "missing" computer.</p>
17955
17956 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
17957 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
17958 code blocks as defined in the
17959 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
17960 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
17961 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
17962 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
17963 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
17964 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
17965 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
17966 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
17967 codes.</p>
17968
17969 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
17970 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
17971 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
17972 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
17973 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
17974 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
17975
17976 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
17977 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
17978 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
17979 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
17980 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
17981 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
17982 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
17983 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
17984 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
17985 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
17986
17987 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
17988 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
17989 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
17990
17991       </div>
17992       <div class="tags">
17993
17994
17995         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>.
17996
17997
17998       </div>
17999     </div>
18000     <div class="padding"></div>
18001
18002     <div class="entry">
18003       <div class="title">
18004         <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>
18005       </div>
18006       <div class="date">
18007         17th January 2009
18008       </div>
18009       <div class="body">
18010         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
18011 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18012 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18013 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18014 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18015 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
18016 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18017 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18018 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18019 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18020 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18021 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
18022 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18023 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
18024
18025 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
18026 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
18027 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18028 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18029 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18030 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18031 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18032 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18033 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18034 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18035 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18036 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
18037 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18038 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18039 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18040 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18041 playing when the download is done.</p>
18042
18043 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18044 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
18045 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18046 too.</p>
18047
18048 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18049 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18050 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18051 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
18052
18053       </div>
18054       <div class="tags">
18055
18056
18057         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>.
18058
18059
18060       </div>
18061     </div>
18062     <div class="padding"></div>
18063
18064     <div class="entry">
18065       <div class="title">
18066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
18067       </div>
18068       <div class="date">
18069         28th December 2008
18070       </div>
18071       <div class="body">
18072         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
18073 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18074 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18075 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18076 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
18077 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18078 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18079 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18080 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18081 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
18082 source, sink and mixer applications and
18083 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
18084 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
18085 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
18086 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
18087 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
18088 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
18089 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
18090 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
18091 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
18092
18093 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
18094 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
18095 larger stick as well.</p>
18096
18097       </div>
18098       <div class="tags">
18099
18100
18101         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>.
18102
18103
18104       </div>
18105     </div>
18106     <div class="padding"></div>
18107
18108     <div class="entry">
18109       <div class="title">
18110         <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>
18111       </div>
18112       <div class="date">
18113          7th December 2008
18114       </div>
18115       <div class="body">
18116         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18117 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18118 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18119 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
18120 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18121 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
18122 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18123 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
18124
18125 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18126 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18127 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18128 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18129 of these cards.</p>
18130
18131       </div>
18132       <div class="tags">
18133
18134
18135         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>.
18136
18137
18138       </div>
18139     </div>
18140     <div class="padding"></div>
18141
18142     <div class="entry">
18143       <div class="title">
18144         <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>
18145       </div>
18146       <div class="date">
18147         25th November 2008
18148       </div>
18149       <div class="body">
18150         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
18151 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
18152 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
18153 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
18154 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
18155 notes are available on
18156 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
18157 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
18158 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
18159 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
18160 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
18161 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
18162 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
18163 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
18164 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
18165
18166 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
18167 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
18168
18169       </div>
18170       <div class="tags">
18171
18172
18173         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>.
18174
18175
18176       </div>
18177     </div>
18178     <div class="padding"></div>
18179
18180     <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>
18181     <div id="sidebar">
18182
18183
18184
18185 <h2>Archive</h2>
18186 <ul>
18187
18188 <li>2013
18189 <ul>
18190
18191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
18192
18193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
18194
18195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
18196
18197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
18198
18199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18200
18201 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
18202
18203 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
18204
18205 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
18206
18207 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
18208
18209 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
18210
18211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
18212
18213 </ul></li>
18214
18215 <li>2012
18216 <ul>
18217
18218 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
18219
18220 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
18221
18222 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
18223
18224 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
18225
18226 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
18227
18228 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
18229
18230 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
18231
18232 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
18233
18234 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
18235
18236 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
18237
18238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
18239
18240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
18241
18242 </ul></li>
18243
18244 <li>2011
18245 <ul>
18246
18247 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
18248
18249 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
18250
18251 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
18252
18253 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
18254
18255 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
18256
18257 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
18258
18259 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
18260
18261 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
18262
18263 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
18264
18265 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
18266
18267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
18268
18269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
18270
18271 </ul></li>
18272
18273 <li>2010
18274 <ul>
18275
18276 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
18277
18278 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
18279
18280 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
18281
18282 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
18283
18284 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18285
18286 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
18287
18288 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
18289
18290 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
18291
18292 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
18293
18294 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
18295
18296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
18297
18298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
18299
18300 </ul></li>
18301
18302 <li>2009
18303 <ul>
18304
18305 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
18306
18307 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
18308
18309 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
18310
18311 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
18312
18313 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
18314
18315 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
18316
18317 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
18318
18319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
18320
18321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
18322
18323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
18324
18325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
18326
18327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
18328
18329 </ul></li>
18330
18331 <li>2008
18332 <ul>
18333
18334 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
18335
18336 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
18337
18338 </ul></li>
18339
18340 </ul>
18341
18342
18343
18344 <h2>Tags</h2>
18345 <ul>
18346
18347  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
18348
18349  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
18350
18351  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
18352
18353  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
18354
18355  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
18356
18357  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (13)</a></li>
18358
18359  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
18360
18361  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (91)</a></li>
18362
18363  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
18364
18365  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
18366
18367  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
18368
18369  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
18370
18371  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (230)</a></li>
18372
18373  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
18374
18375  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
18376
18377  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
18378
18379  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
18380
18381  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
18382
18383  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
18384
18385  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
18386
18387  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
18388
18389  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
18390
18391  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
18392
18393  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
18394
18395  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (6)</a></li>
18396
18397  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
18398
18399  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (238)</a></li>
18400
18401  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (160)</a></li>
18402
18403  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (9)</a></li>
18404
18405  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
18406
18407  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
18408
18409  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
18410
18411  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
18412
18413  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
18414
18415  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
18416
18417  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
18418
18419  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
18420
18421  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
18422
18423  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
18424
18425  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (33)</a></li>
18426
18427  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
18428
18429  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
18430
18431  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
18432
18433  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
18434
18435  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
18436
18437  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (21)</a></li>
18438
18439  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
18440
18441  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
18442
18443  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
18444
18445  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
18446
18447  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
18448
18449 </ul>
18450
18451
18452     </div>
18453     <p style="text-align: right">
18454  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
18455 </p>
18456
18457   </body>
18458 </html>