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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/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th April 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
  32 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
  33 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
  34 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
  35 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
  36 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
  37
  38 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
  39 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
  40 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
  41 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
  42 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
  43 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
  44 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
  45
  46 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
  47 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
  48 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
  49 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
  50 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
  51 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
  52 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
  53 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
  54 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
  55 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
  56 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
  57 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
  58
  59 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
  60 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
  61 become root:</p>
  62
  63 <p><pre>
  64 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
  65   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
  66   u-boot-tools
  67 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
  68   freedom-maker
  69 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
  70 </pre></p>
  71
  72 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
  73 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
  74 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
  75 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
  76 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
  77 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
  78 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
  79 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
  80
  81 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
  82 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
  83 the preseed values:</p>
  84
  85 <p><pre>
  86 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
  87 </pre></p>
  88
  89 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
  90 it still work.</p>
  91
  92 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
  93 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
  94 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
  95 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
  96 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
  97 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
  98 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
  99
 100 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 101 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 102 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 103 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 104 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 105 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 106
 107       </div>
 108       <div class="tags">
 109
 110
 111         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>.
 112
 113
 114       </div>
 115     </div>
 116     <div class="padding"></div>
 117
 118     <div class="entry">
 119       <div class="title">
 120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
 121       </div>
 122       <div class="date">
 123          9th April 2014
 124       </div>
 125       <div class="body">
 126         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
 127 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
 128 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
 129 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
 130 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
 131 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
 132 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
 133 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
 134 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
 135 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
 136 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
 137 have looked at a system called
 138 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
 139 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
 140
 141 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
 142 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
 143 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
 144 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
 145 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
 146 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
 147 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
 148 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
 149 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
 150 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
 151 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
 152 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
 153 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
 154
 155 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
 156 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
 157 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
 158 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
 159 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
 160 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
 161 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
 162 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
 163 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
 164 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
 165 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
 166 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
 167 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
 168 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
 169 account.</p>
 170
 171 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
 172 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
 173 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
 174 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
 175 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
 176 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
 177 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
 178
 179 <p><blockquote><pre>
 180 [s3c]
 181 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 182 backend-login: API-login
 183 backend-password: API-password
 184 fs-passphrase: local-password
 185 </pre></blockquote></p>
 186
 187 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
 188 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
 189 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
 190 details and password to create it:</p>
 191
 192 <p><blockquote><pre>
 193 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
 194 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 195   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 196 Enter backend login:
 197 Enter backend password:
 198 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
 199 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
 200 Enter encryption password:
 201 Confirm encryption password:
 202 Generating random encryption key...
 203 Creating metadata tables...
 204 Dumping metadata...
 205 ..objects..
 206 ..blocks..
 207 ..inodes..
 208 ..inode_blocks..
 209 ..symlink_targets..
 210 ..names..
 211 ..contents..
 212 ..ext_attributes..
 213 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 214 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
 215 # </pre></blockquote></p>
 216
 217 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
 218
 219 <p><blockquote><pre>
 220 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 221   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 222 Using 4 upload threads.
 223 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
 224 Reading metadata...
 225 ..objects..
 226 ..blocks..
 227 ..inodes..
 228 ..inode_blocks..
 229 ..symlink_targets..
 230 ..names..
 231 ..contents..
 232 ..ext_attributes..
 233 Mounting filesystem...
 234 # df -h /s3ql
 235 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
 236 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
 237 #
 238 </pre></blockquote></p>
 239
 240 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
 241 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
 242 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
 243 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
 244 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
 245 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
 246
 247 <p><blockquote><pre>
 248 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
 249 #
 250 </pre></blockquote></p>
 251
 252 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
 253 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
 254 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
 255 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
 256 file system:</p>
 257
 258 <p><blockquote><pre>
 259 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
 260 Using cached metadata.
 261 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
 262 Checking DB integrity...
 263 Creating temporary extra indices...
 264 Checking lost+found...
 265 Checking cached objects...
 266 Checking names (refcounts)...
 267 Checking contents (names)...
 268 Checking contents (inodes)...
 269 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
 270 Checking objects (reference counts)...
 271 Checking objects (backend)...
 272 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
 273 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
 274 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
 275 Checking objects (sizes)...
 276 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
 277 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
 278 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
 279 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
 280 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
 281 Checking inodes (sizes)...
 282 Checking extended attributes (names)...
 283 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
 284 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
 285 Checking directory reachability...
 286 Checking unix conventions...
 287 Checking referential integrity...
 288 Dropping temporary indices...
 289 Backing up old metadata...
 290 Dumping metadata...
 291 ..objects..
 292 ..blocks..
 293 ..inodes..
 294 ..inode_blocks..
 295 ..symlink_targets..
 296 ..names..
 297 ..contents..
 298 ..ext_attributes..
 299 Compressing and uploading metadata...
 300 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
 301 #
 302 </pre></blockquote></p>
 303
 304 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
 305 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
 306 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
 307 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
 308 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
 309 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
 310 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
 311 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
 312 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
 313 working set.</p>
 314
 315 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
 316 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
 317 busy:</p>
 318
 319 <p><blockquote><pre>
 320 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
 321   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
 322 Using 8 upload threads.
 323 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
 324 #
 325 </pre></blockquote></p>
 326
 327 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
 328 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
 329 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
 330 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
 331 s3qlctrl:
 332
 333 <p><blockquote><pre>
 334 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
 335 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
 336 #
 337 </pre></blockquote></p>
 338
 339 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
 340 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
 341 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
 342 a report:</p>
 343
 344 <p><blockquote><pre>
 345 # s3qlstat /s3ql
 346 Directory entries:    9141
 347 Inodes:               9143
 348 Data blocks:          8851
 349 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
 350 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
 351 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
 352 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
 353 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
 354 #
 355 </pre></blockquote></p>
 356
 357 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
 358 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
 359 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
 360 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
 361 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
 362 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
 363 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
 364 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
 365 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
 366 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
 367 best.</p>
 368
 369 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
 370 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
 371 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
 372 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
 373 poster is titled
 374 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
 375 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
 376 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
 377 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
 378 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
 379
 380 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
 381 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
 382 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
 383 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
 384 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
 385 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
 386 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
 387 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
 388
 389 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
 390 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
 391 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
 392 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
 393 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
 394 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
 395 only read from it.</p>
 396
 397 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 398 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 399 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 400
 401       </div>
 402       <div class="tags">
 403
 404
 405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 406
 407
 408       </div>
 409     </div>
 410     <div class="padding"></div>
 411
 412     <div class="entry">
 413       <div class="title">
 414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="date">
 417          1st April 2014
 418       </div>
 419       <div class="body">
 420         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
 421 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
 422 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
 423 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
 424 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
 425 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
 426 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
 427 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
 428 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
 429 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
 430 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
 431 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
 432 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
 433
 434 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
 435 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
 436 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
 437 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
 438 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
 439 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
 440 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
 441 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
 442 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
 443 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
 444 Linux.</p>
 445
 446 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
 447 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
 448 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
 449 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
 450 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
 451 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
 452 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
 453 Windows before metro).</p>
 454
 455 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
 456 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
 457 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
 458 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
 459 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
 460 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
 461 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
 462 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
 463 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
 464 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
 465 old Windows binaries, check it out by
 466 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
 467 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
 468 image.</p>
 469
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="tags">
 472
 473
 474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
 475
 476
 477       </div>
 478     </div>
 479     <div class="padding"></div>
 480
 481     <div class="entry">
 482       <div class="title">
 483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
 484       </div>
 485       <div class="date">
 486         30th March 2014
 487       </div>
 488       <div class="body">
 489         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 490 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
 491 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
 492 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
 493 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
 494
 495 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 496
 497 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
 498 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
 499 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
 500 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
 501 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
 502
 503 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
 504 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
 505 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
 506
 507 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
 508 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
 509 hunger.</p>
 510
 511 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 512 project?</strong></p>
 513
 514 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
 515 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
 516 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
 517 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
 518 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
 519 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
 520 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
 521 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
 522 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
 523 running.  I just loved it.</p>
 524
 525 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 526 Edu?</strong></p>
 527
 528 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
 529 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
 530 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
 531 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
 532 be made of steel.</p>
 533
 534 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 535 Edu?</strong></p>
 536
 537 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
 538
 539 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
 540 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
 541 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
 542 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
 543 or dropped.</p>
 544
 545 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
 546 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
 547 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
 548 discourage many people too.</p>
 549
 550 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 551
 552 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
 553 Virtualbox.</p>
 554
 555
 556 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 557 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 558
 559 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
 560 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
 561 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
 562 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
 563 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
 564 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
 565 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
 566 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
 567 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
 568
 569       </div>
 570       <div class="tags">
 571
 572
 573         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>.
 574
 575
 576       </div>
 577     </div>
 578     <div class="padding"></div>
 579
 580     <div class="entry">
 581       <div class="title">
 582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
 583       </div>
 584       <div class="date">
 585         25th March 2014
 586       </div>
 587       <div class="body">
 588         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
 589 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
 590 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
 591 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
 592 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
 593 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
 594 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
 595 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
 596 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
 597
 598 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
 599 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
 600 looked a given way.  Such
 601 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
 602 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
 603 called a
 604 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
 605 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
 606 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
 607 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
 608 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
 609 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
 610 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
 611 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
 612 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
 613 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
 614 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
 615 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
 616 There are several commercial services around providing such
 617 timestamping.  A quick search for
 618 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
 619 service</a>" pointed me to at least
 620 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
 621 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
 622 Vadis</a>,
 623 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
 624 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
 625 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
 626 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
 627
 628 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
 629 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
 630 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
 631 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
 632 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
 633 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
 634 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
 635 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
 636 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
 637 Greifswald.</p>
 638
 639 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
 640 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
 641 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
 642 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
 643 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
 644
 645 <p><blockquote><pre>
 646 #!/bin/sh
 647 set -e
 648 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
 649 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
 650 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
 651 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
 652 cafile=chain.txt
 653 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
 654     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
 655 fi
 656 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
 657     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
 658 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
 659 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
 660 base64 < "$resfile"
 661 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
 662 </pre></blockquote></p>
 663
 664 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
 665 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
 666 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
 667 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
 668 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
 669 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
 670 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
 671 changed.</p>
 672
 673 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
 674 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
 675 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
 676 to set up?</p>
 677
 678       </div>
 679       <div class="tags">
 680
 681
 682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 683
 684
 685       </div>
 686     </div>
 687     <div class="padding"></div>
 688
 689     <div class="entry">
 690       <div class="title">
 691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
 692       </div>
 693       <div class="date">
 694         21st March 2014
 695       </div>
 696       <div class="body">
 697         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
 698 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
 699 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
 700 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
 701 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
 702 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
 703 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
 704
 705 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
 706 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
 707 tried using
 708 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
 709 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
 710 and program
 711 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
 712 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
 713 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
 714 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
 715 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
 716 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
 717 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
 718 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
 719 this method.</p>
 720
 721 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
 722 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
 723 problem is
 724 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
 725 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
 726 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
 727 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
 728 DVD structures, as the python library
 729 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
 730 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
 731 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
 732 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
 733 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
 734 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
 735
 736 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
 737 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
 738
 739       </div>
 740       <div class="tags">
 741
 742
 743         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 744
 745
 746       </div>
 747     </div>
 748     <div class="padding"></div>
 749
 750     <div class="entry">
 751       <div class="title">
 752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
 753       </div>
 754       <div class="date">
 755         14th March 2014
 756       </div>
 757       <div class="body">
 758         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 759 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
 760 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
 761 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
 762 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
 763 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
 764 release (0.2).</p>
 765
 766 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
 767 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
 768 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
 769 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
 770 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
 771 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
 772 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
 773 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
 774 and build using
 775 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
 776 with a user with sudo access to become root:
 777
 778 <pre>
 779 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
 780   freedom-maker
 781 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
 782   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
 783   u-boot-tools
 784 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
 785 </pre>
 786
 787 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
 788 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
 789 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
 790 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
 791 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
 792 kpartx call.</p>
 793
 794 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
 795 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
 796 the preseed values:</p>
 797
 798 <pre>
 799 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
 800 </pre>
 801
 802 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
 803 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
 804 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
 805 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
 806 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
 807 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
 808
 809 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
 810 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
 811 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
 812 irc.debian.org)</a> and
 813 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 814 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 815
 816       </div>
 817       <div class="tags">
 818
 819
 820         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>.
 821
 822
 823       </div>
 824     </div>
 825     <div class="padding"></div>
 826
 827     <div class="entry">
 828       <div class="title">
 829         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
 830       </div>
 831       <div class="date">
 832         12th March 2014
 833       </div>
 834       <div class="body">
 835         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
 836 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
 837 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
 838 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
 839 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
 840 document this better when one of the customers of
 841 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
 842 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
 843 get this working are the following:</p>
 844
 845 <p><ol>
 846
 847 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
 848 example host here.</li>
 849
 850 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
 851 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
 852
 853 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
 854 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
 855
 856 </ol></p>
 857
 858 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
 859 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
 860 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
 861 started).</p>
 862
 863 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
 864 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
 865
 866 <p><blockquote><pre>
 867 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
 868 Export list for nas-server:
 869 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
 870 root@tjener:~#
 871 </pre></blockquote></p>
 872
 873 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
 874 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
 875 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
 876 NFS access.</p>
 877
 878 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
 879 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
 880 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
 881
 882 <p><blockquote><pre>
 883 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 884 </pre></blockquote></p>
 885
 886 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
 887 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
 888 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
 889 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
 890
 891 <p><blockquote><pre>
 892 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 893 objectClass: automount
 894 cn: nas-server
 895 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 896
 897 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 898 objectClass: top
 899 objectClass: automountMap
 900 ou: auto.nas-server
 901
 902 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
 903 objectClass: automount
 904 cn: /
 905 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
 906 </pre></blockquote></p>
 907
 908 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
 909 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
 910 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
 911
 912 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
 913 the storage server directly by just visiting the
 914 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
 915 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
 916
 917       </div>
 918       <div class="tags">
 919
 920
 921         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>.
 922
 923
 924       </div>
 925     </div>
 926     <div class="padding"></div>
 927
 928     <div class="entry">
 929       <div class="title">
 930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
 931       </div>
 932       <div class="date">
 933         22nd February 2014
 934       </div>
 935       <div class="body">
 936         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
 937 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
 938 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
 939 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
 940 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
 941 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
 942 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
 943 proper home since then.</p>
 944
 945 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
 946 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
 947 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
 948 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
 949 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
 950
 951 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
 952 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
 953 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
 954 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
 955 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
 956 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
 957 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
 958 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
 959 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
 960
 961       </div>
 962       <div class="tags">
 963
 964
 965         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>.
 966
 967
 968       </div>
 969     </div>
 970     <div class="padding"></div>
 971
 972     <div class="entry">
 973       <div class="title">
 974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
 975       </div>
 976       <div class="date">
 977          3rd February 2014
 978       </div>
 979       <div class="body">
 980         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
 981 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
 982 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
 983 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
 984 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
 985 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
 986 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
 987 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
 988 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
 989
 990 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
 991 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
 992 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
 993 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
 994 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
 995 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
 996
 997 <p><blockquote><pre>
 998 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
 999 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
1000 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
1001 dhclient /dev/eth0
1002 </pre></blockquote></p>
1003
1004 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1005 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1006 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
1007
1008 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1009 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1010 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1011 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1012 side.</p>
1013
1014 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1015 stuff:</p>
1016
1017 <p><blockquote><pre>
1018 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1019 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1020 EOF
1021 apt-get update
1022 apt-get dist-upgrade
1023 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1024     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1025 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1026 </pre></blockquote></p>
1027
1028 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1029 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
1030 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1031 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1032 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1033 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1034 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1035 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1036 ssh instead.
1037
1038 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1039 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1040 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1041 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1042 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1043 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
1044
1045 <p><blockquote><pre>
1046 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1047 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1048 EOF
1049 </pre></blockquote></p>
1050
1051 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1052 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1053 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1054 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
1055
1056 <p><blockquote><pre>
1057 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
1058 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1059 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
1060 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
1061 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
1062 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1063 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1064 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1065 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1066 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1067 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1068 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1069 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1070 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
1071 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
1072 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1073 #
1074 </pre></blockquote></p>
1075
1076 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1077 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1078 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
1079 command line stuff.<p>
1080
1081       </div>
1082       <div class="tags">
1083
1084
1085         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>.
1086
1087
1088       </div>
1089     </div>
1090     <div class="padding"></div>
1091
1092     <div class="entry">
1093       <div class="title">
1094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
1095       </div>
1096       <div class="date">
1097         29th January 2014
1098       </div>
1099       <div class="body">
1100         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
1101 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
1102 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
1103 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
1104 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
1105 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
1106 investigated in
1107 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
1108 from December 2013, in the article
1109 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
1110 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
1111 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
1112 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
1113 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
1114 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
1115 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
1116 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
1117
1118 <p><blockquote>
1119 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
1120 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
1121 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
1122 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
1123 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
1124 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
1125 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
1126 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
1127 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
1128 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
1129 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
1130 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
1131
1132 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
1133 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
1134 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
1135 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
1136 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
1137 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
1138 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
1139 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
1140 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
1141 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
1142 </blockquote><p>
1143
1144 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
1145 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
1146 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
1147 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
1148 summarized like this:</p>
1149
1150 <p><blockquote>
1151 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
1152 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
1153 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
1154 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
1155 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
1156 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
1157 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
1158 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
1159 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
1160 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
1161 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
1162 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
1163 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
1164 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
1165 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
1166 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
1167 </blockquote></p>
1168
1169 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
1170 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
1171 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
1172 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
1173
1174 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1175 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1176 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1177
1178       </div>
1179       <div class="tags">
1180
1181
1182         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>.
1183
1184
1185       </div>
1186     </div>
1187     <div class="padding"></div>
1188
1189     <div class="entry">
1190       <div class="title">
1191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="date">
1194         14th January 2014
1195       </div>
1196       <div class="body">
1197         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
1198 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1199 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1200 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1201 the source.  The company behind it provide
1202 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
1203 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
1204 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1205 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1206 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
1207 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
1208 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
1209 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1210 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
1211 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
1212 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
1213 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
1214 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1215 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1216 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1217 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
1218 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
1219 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
1220 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
1221
1222 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
1223
1224 <ul>
1225
1226   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
1227   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
1228   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
1229
1230 </ul>
1231
1232 <p>You can
1233 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1234 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1235 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1236 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1237 include a test suite check.</p>
1238
1239       </div>
1240       <div class="tags">
1241
1242
1243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1244
1245
1246       </div>
1247     </div>
1248     <div class="padding"></div>
1249
1250     <div class="entry">
1251       <div class="title">
1252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="date">
1255         25th December 2013
1256       </div>
1257       <div class="body">
1258         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1259 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
1260 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
1261 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
1262 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
1263 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
1264 George</a>.</p>
1265
1266 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
1267
1268 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1269
1270 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
1271 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
1272 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
1273 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
1274 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
1275 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
1276
1277 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
1278 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
1279 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
1280 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
1281 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
1282 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
1283 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
1284 to help building another school's informational education concept from
1285 scratch.</p>
1286
1287 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
1288 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
1289 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
1290
1291 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
1292 and cycling.</p>
1293
1294 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1295 project?</strong></p>
1296
1297 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
1298 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
1299 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
1300 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
1301 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
1302 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
1303
1304 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
1305 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
1306 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
1307 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
1308 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
1309 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
1310 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
1311 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
1312 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
1313
1314 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
1315 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
1316 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
1317 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
1318
1319 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1320 Edu?</strong></p>
1321
1322 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
1323 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
1324 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
1325 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
1326 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
1327 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
1328 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
1329 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
1330 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
1331 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
1332 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
1333 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
1334 that it rocks!</p>
1335
1336 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
1337 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
1338 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
1339 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
1340 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
1341 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
1342 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
1343
1344 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1345 Edu?</strong></p>
1346
1347 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
1348 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
1349 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
1350 can list a few points about that:</p>
1351
1352 <ul>
1353
1354  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
1355  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
1356  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
1357
1358 </ul>
1359
1360 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
1361
1362 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1363
1364 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
1365 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
1366 year.</p>
1367
1368 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
1369 run text tools. I use
1370 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
1371 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
1372 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
1373 based full-featured student management software with the two),
1374 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
1375 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
1376 coloured world called the WWW, I use
1377 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
1378 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
1379 e-mail.</p>
1380
1381 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
1382 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
1383 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
1384 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
1385 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
1386 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
1387 Facebook now ;).</p>
1388
1389 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1390 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1391
1392 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
1393 side is what I have experienced.</p>
1394
1395 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
1396 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
1397 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
1398 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
1399 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
1400 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
1401 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
1402 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
1403 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
1404 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
1405 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
1406 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
1407 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
1408 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
1409 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
1410 plain criminal.</p>
1411
1412 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
1413 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
1414 founded an association named
1415 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
1416 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
1417 area of free and open source software, for example the
1418 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
1419 Teckids and are the youth programme of
1420 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
1421 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
1422 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
1423 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
1424 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
1425 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
1426
1427 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
1428 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
1429 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
1430 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
1431 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
1432 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
1433 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
1434 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
1435 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
1436 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
1437 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
1438 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
1439
1440 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
1441 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
1442 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
1443 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
1444
1445 <!--
1446
1447 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
1448
1449 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
1450 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
1451
1452  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
1453    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
1454    of the decision makers above;
1455  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
1456    knowledge about free software
1457
1458 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
1459
1460 -->
1461
1462       </div>
1463       <div class="tags">
1464
1465
1466         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>.
1467
1468
1469       </div>
1470     </div>
1471     <div class="padding"></div>
1472
1473     <div class="entry">
1474       <div class="title">
1475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
1476       </div>
1477       <div class="date">
1478          6th December 2013
1479       </div>
1480       <div class="body">
1481         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
1482 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1483 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
1484 had a new school administrator show up on
1485 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
1486 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
1487 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
1488 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
1489 Germany a few years ago.</p>
1490
1491 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1492
1493 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
1494 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
1495 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
1496 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
1497
1498 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
1499 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
1500 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
1501 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
1502 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
1503 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
1504 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
1505 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
1506 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
1507
1508 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1509 project?</strong></p>
1510
1511 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
1512 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
1513 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
1514 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
1515
1516 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1517 Edu?</strong></p>
1518
1519 <ul>
1520   <li>Quick installation,</li>
1521   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
1522   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
1523   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
1524     single company,</li>
1525   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
1526     experience and problem solutions.</li>
1527 </ul>
1528
1529 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1530 Edu?</strong></p>
1531
1532 <ul>
1533   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
1534   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
1535   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
1536   working again reliably.
1537
1538   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
1539   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
1540   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
1541   as their base.
1542
1543   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
1544   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
1545   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
1546   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
1547   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
1548   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
1549
1550   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
1551   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
1552   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
1553   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
1554   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
1555   schemes.</li>
1556
1557   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
1558   compared to Debian.</li>
1559
1560 </ul>
1561
1562 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
1563 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
1564 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
1565 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
1566
1567 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1568
1569 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
1570 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
1571 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
1572 programming languages for teaching.</p>
1573
1574 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1575 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1576
1577 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
1578
1579 <ul>
1580
1581   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
1582     teaching and learning.</li>
1583
1584   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
1585     home, and at their working place without running into license or
1586     conversion problems.</li>
1587
1588   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
1589     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
1590     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
1591     science, not products.</li>
1592
1593   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
1594     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
1595
1596 </ul>
1597
1598       </div>
1599       <div class="tags">
1600
1601
1602         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>.
1603
1604
1605       </div>
1606     </div>
1607     <div class="padding"></div>
1608
1609     <div class="entry">
1610       <div class="title">
1611         <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>
1612       </div>
1613       <div class="date">
1614         30th November 2013
1615       </div>
1616       <div class="body">
1617         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
1618 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
1619 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
1620 experiment with interesting network technology, the
1621 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
1622 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
1623 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
1624 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
1625 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
1626 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
1627 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
1628 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
1629 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
1630 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
1631 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
1632 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
1633 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
1634 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
1635 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
1636 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
1637
1638       </div>
1639       <div class="tags">
1640
1641
1642         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>.
1643
1644
1645       </div>
1646     </div>
1647     <div class="padding"></div>
1648
1649     <div class="entry">
1650       <div class="title">
1651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
1652       </div>
1653       <div class="date">
1654         24th November 2013
1655       </div>
1656       <div class="body">
1657         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1658 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1659 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1660 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1661 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
1662 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1663 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
1664 is working on.  I checked the
1665 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
1666 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
1667 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
1668 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1669 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1670 These are the release notes:</p>
1671
1672 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
1673
1674 <ul>
1675
1676   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1677    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1678    up.</li>
1679
1680   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
1681
1682   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1683    Matthias Klose.</li>
1684
1685   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1686    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
1687
1688   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1689    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1690    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
1691
1692 </ul>
1693
1694 <p>You can
1695 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1696 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1697 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1698 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1699 include a testsuite check.</p>
1700
1701       </div>
1702       <div class="tags">
1703
1704
1705         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1706
1707
1708       </div>
1709     </div>
1710     <div class="padding"></div>
1711
1712     <div class="entry">
1713       <div class="title">
1714         <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>
1715       </div>
1716       <div class="date">
1717         21st November 2013
1718       </div>
1719       <div class="body">
1720         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
1721 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
1722 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
1723 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
1724 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
1725 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
1726 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
1727 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
1728 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
1729 TED talk
1730 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
1731 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
1732 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
1733
1734 <blockquote>
1735
1736 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
1737 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
1738 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
1739 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
1740 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
1741 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
1742 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
1743 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
1744 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
1745 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
1746 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
1747
1748 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
1749 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
1750 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
1751
1752 </blockquote>
1753
1754 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
1755 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
1756 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
1757 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
1758 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
1759 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
1760 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
1761 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
1762 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
1763
1764       </div>
1765       <div class="tags">
1766
1767
1768         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>.
1769
1770
1771       </div>
1772     </div>
1773     <div class="padding"></div>
1774
1775     <div class="entry">
1776       <div class="title">
1777         <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>
1778       </div>
1779       <div class="date">
1780         13th November 2013
1781       </div>
1782       <div class="body">
1783         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
1784 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
1785 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
1786 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
1787 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
1788 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
1789 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
1790 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
1791 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
1792 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
1793 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
1794 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1795 right away. :)</p>
1796
1797       </div>
1798       <div class="tags">
1799
1800
1801         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>.
1802
1803
1804       </div>
1805     </div>
1806     <div class="padding"></div>
1807
1808     <div class="entry">
1809       <div class="title">
1810         <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>
1811       </div>
1812       <div class="date">
1813         10th November 2013
1814       </div>
1815       <div class="body">
1816         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
1817 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
1818 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
1819 MR3040 as a mesh node using
1820 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
1821
1822 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
1823 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
1824 and downloaded
1825 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
1826 recommended firmware image</a>
1827 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
1828 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
1829 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
1830 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
1831 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
1832
1833 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
1834 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
1835 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
1836 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
1837 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
1838 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
1839 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
1840 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
1841 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
1842 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
1843 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
1844 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
1845 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
1846
1847 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
1848 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
1849 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
1850 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
1851 them:</p>
1852
1853 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
1854
1855 <pre>
1856
1857 config interface 'loopback'
1858         option ifname 'lo'
1859         option proto 'static'
1860         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
1861         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
1862
1863 config globals 'globals'
1864         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
1865
1866 config interface 'lan'
1867         option ifname 'eth0'
1868         option type 'bridge'
1869         option proto 'dhcp'
1870         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
1871         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
1872         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
1873         option ip6assign '60'
1874
1875 config interface 'mesh'
1876         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1877         option mtu '1528'
1878         option proto 'batadv'
1879         option mesh 'bat0'
1880 </pre>
1881
1882 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
1883 <pre>
1884
1885 config wifi-device 'radio0'
1886         option type 'mac80211'
1887         option channel '11'
1888         option hwmode '11ng'
1889         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
1890         option htmode 'HT20'
1891         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
1892         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
1893         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
1894         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
1895         option disabled '0'
1896
1897 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
1898         option device 'radio0'
1899         option ifname 'adhoc0'
1900         option network 'mesh'
1901         option encryption 'none'
1902         option mode 'adhoc'
1903         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
1904         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
1905 </pre>
1906 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
1907 <pre>
1908
1909 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
1910         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
1911         option 'aggregated_ogms'
1912         option 'ap_isolation'
1913         option 'bonding'
1914         option 'fragmentation'
1915         option 'gw_bandwidth'
1916         option 'gw_mode'
1917         option 'gw_sel_class'
1918         option 'log_level'
1919         option 'orig_interval'
1920         option 'vis_mode'
1921         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
1922         option 'distributed_arp_table'
1923         option 'network_coding'
1924         option 'hop_penalty'
1925
1926 # yet another batX instance
1927 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
1928 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
1929 </pre>
1930
1931 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
1932 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
1933 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
1934
1935       </div>
1936       <div class="tags">
1937
1938
1939         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>.
1940
1941
1942       </div>
1943     </div>
1944     <div class="padding"></div>
1945
1946     <div class="entry">
1947       <div class="title">
1948         <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>
1949       </div>
1950       <div class="date">
1951          2nd November 2013
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="body">
1954         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1955 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1956 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1957 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1958 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1959
1960 <p><pre>
1961 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1962 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1963 # Provides:          rsyslog
1964 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1965 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1966 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1967 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1968 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1969 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1970 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1971 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1972 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1973 ### END INIT INFO
1974 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1975 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1976 </pre></p>
1977
1978 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1979 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1980 info/comments.</p>
1981
1982 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1983 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1984
1985 <p><pre>
1986 #!/bin/sh
1987
1988 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1989 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1990 # and status_of_proc is working.
1991 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1992
1993 #
1994 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1995
1996 #
1997 do_start()
1998 {
1999         # Return
2000         #   0 if daemon has been started
2001         #   1 if daemon was already running
2002         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2003         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2004                 || return 1
2005         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2006                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2007                 || return 2
2008         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2009         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2010         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2011 }
2012
2013 #
2014 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2015 #
2016 do_stop()
2017 {
2018         # Return
2019         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2020         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2021         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2022         #   other if a failure occurred
2023         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2024         RETVAL="$?"
2025         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2026         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2027         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2028         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2029         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2030         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2031         # sleep for some time.
2032         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2033         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2034         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2035         rm -f $PIDFILE
2036         return "$RETVAL"
2037 }
2038
2039 #
2040 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2041 #
2042 do_reload() {
2043         #
2044         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2045         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2046         # then implement that here.
2047         #
2048         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2049         return 0
2050 }
2051
2052 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2053 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2054 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2055 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2056     script="$1"
2057     shift
2058     . $script
2059 else
2060     exit 0
2061 fi
2062
2063 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2064 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2065
2066 # Exit if the package is not installed
2067 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2068
2069 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2070 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2071
2072 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2073 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2074
2075 case "$1" in
2076   start)
2077         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2078         do_start
2079         case "$?" in
2080                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2081                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2082         esac
2083         ;;
2084   stop)
2085         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2086         do_stop
2087         case "$?" in
2088                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2089                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2090         esac
2091         ;;
2092   status)
2093         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2094         ;;
2095   #reload|force-reload)
2096         #
2097         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2098         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2099         #
2100         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2101         #do_reload
2102         #log_end_msg $?
2103         #;;
2104   restart|force-reload)
2105         #
2106         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2107         # 'force-reload' alias
2108         #
2109         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2110         do_stop
2111         case "$?" in
2112           0|1)
2113                 do_start
2114                 case "$?" in
2115                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2116                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2117                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2118                 esac
2119                 ;;
2120           *)
2121                 # Failed to stop
2122                 log_end_msg 1
2123                 ;;
2124         esac
2125         ;;
2126   *)
2127         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2128         exit 3
2129         ;;
2130 esac
2131
2132 :
2133 </pre></p>
2134
2135 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2136 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2137 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2138 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2139
2140 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2141 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2142 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2143 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2144 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2145
2146       </div>
2147       <div class="tags">
2148
2149
2150         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>.
2151
2152
2153       </div>
2154     </div>
2155     <div class="padding"></div>
2156
2157     <div class="entry">
2158       <div class="title">
2159         <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>
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="date">
2162          1st November 2013
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="body">
2165         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2166 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2167 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2168 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2169 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2170 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2171 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2172 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2173 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2174 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2175 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2176 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2177
2178 <p>The source is now available from
2179 <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>
2180
2181       </div>
2182       <div class="tags">
2183
2184
2185         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>.
2186
2187
2188       </div>
2189     </div>
2190     <div class="padding"></div>
2191
2192     <div class="entry">
2193       <div class="title">
2194         <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>
2195       </div>
2196       <div class="date">
2197         27th October 2013
2198       </div>
2199       <div class="body">
2200         <p>The
2201 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2202 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2203 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2204 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2205 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2206 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2207 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2208 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2209 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2210 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2211 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2212 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2213
2214 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2215 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2216 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2217 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2218 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2219 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2220 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2221 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2222 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2223 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2224 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2225 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2226 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2227 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2228 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2229 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2230 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2231 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2232 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2233 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2234 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2235 available from
2236 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2237 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2238
2239 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2240 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2241 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2242 list:</p>
2243
2244 <p><pre>
2245 #!/bin/sh
2246 set -e # Exit on first error
2247 rootdir="$1"
2248 cd "$rootdir"
2249 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2250 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2251 EOF
2252 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2253 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2254 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2255     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2256 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2257 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2258 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2259 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2260 </pre></p>
2261
2262 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2263 to build the image:</p>
2264
2265 <pre>
2266 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2267     --variant minbase \
2268     --arch armel \
2269     --distribution jessie \
2270     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2271     --image test.img \
2272     --size 600M \
2273     --bootsize 64M \
2274     --boottype vfat \
2275     --log-level debug \
2276     --verbose \
2277     --no-kernel \
2278     --no-extlinux \
2279     --root-password raspberry \
2280     --hostname raspberrypi \
2281     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2282     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2283     --package netbase \
2284     --package git-core \
2285     --package binutils \
2286     --package ca-certificates \
2287     --package wget \
2288     --package kmod
2289 </pre></p>
2290
2291 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2292 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2293 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2294 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2295 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2296 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2297 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2298
2299 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2300 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2301 build dependency list.</p>
2302
2303 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2304 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2305 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2306 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2307
2308       </div>
2309       <div class="tags">
2310
2311
2312         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>.
2313
2314
2315       </div>
2316     </div>
2317     <div class="padding"></div>
2318
2319     <div class="entry">
2320       <div class="title">
2321         <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>
2322       </div>
2323       <div class="date">
2324         21st October 2013
2325       </div>
2326       <div class="body">
2327         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
2328 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
2329 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
2330 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
2331 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
2332 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
2333 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
2334 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
2335
2336 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
2337 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
2338 instead, I started playing with a
2339 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
2340 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
2341 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
2342 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
2343 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
2344 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
2345 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
2346 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
2347 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
2348 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
2349 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
2350 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
2351 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
2352 every client on the local network.</p>
2353
2354 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
2355 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
2356 and a script
2357 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
2358 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
2359 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
2360 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
2361 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
2362 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
2363 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
2364 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
2365 support.</p>
2366
2367 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
2368 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
2369
2370 <p><pre>
2371 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
2372     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
2373 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
2374 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
2375 %
2376 </pre></p>
2377
2378 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
2379 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
2380 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
2381 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
2382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
2383 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
2384
2385 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
2386 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
2387 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
2388
2389 <p><table>
2390
2391 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
2392 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
2393 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
2394 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
2395 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
2396 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
2397
2398 </table></p>
2399
2400 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
2401 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
2402 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
2403 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
2404 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
2405 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
2406 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
2407
2408       </div>
2409       <div class="tags">
2410
2411
2412         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>.
2413
2414
2415       </div>
2416     </div>
2417     <div class="padding"></div>
2418
2419     <div class="entry">
2420       <div class="title">
2421         <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>
2422       </div>
2423       <div class="date">
2424         19th October 2013
2425       </div>
2426       <div class="body">
2427         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
2428 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
2429 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
2430 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
2431 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
2432 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
2433 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
2434 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
2435
2436       </div>
2437       <div class="tags">
2438
2439
2440         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>.
2441
2442
2443       </div>
2444     </div>
2445     <div class="padding"></div>
2446
2447     <div class="entry">
2448       <div class="title">
2449         <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>
2450       </div>
2451       <div class="date">
2452         15th October 2013
2453       </div>
2454       <div class="body">
2455         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2456 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2457 these. :)</p>
2458
2459 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2460 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2461 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2462 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2463 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2464 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2465 hope you will to. :)</p>
2466
2467 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2468 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2469 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2470 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2471 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2472
2473 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2474 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2475 statement under the heading
2476 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2477 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2478 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2479 too.</p>
2480
2481       </div>
2482       <div class="tags">
2483
2484
2485         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>.
2486
2487
2488       </div>
2489     </div>
2490     <div class="padding"></div>
2491
2492     <div class="entry">
2493       <div class="title">
2494         <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>
2495       </div>
2496       <div class="date">
2497         11th October 2013
2498       </div>
2499       <div class="body">
2500         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
2501 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
2502 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
2503 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
2504 successful examples like
2505 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
2506 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
2507 (see
2508 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
2509 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
2510 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
2511 can be seen from their
2512 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
2513 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
2514 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
2515 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
2516 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
2517
2518 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
2519 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
2520 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
2521 my recent involvement in
2522 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
2523 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
2524 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
2525 when possible, given that most communication between people are
2526 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
2527 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
2528 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
2529 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
2530 important over the years.</p>
2531
2532 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
2533 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
2534 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
2535 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
2536 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
2537 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
2538 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
2539 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
2540 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
2541 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
2542 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
2543 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
2544 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
2545 speakers about this talk (from
2546 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
2547
2548 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2549
2550 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
2551 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
2552 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
2553 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
2554 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
2555 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
2556 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
2557 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
2558 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
2559 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
2560 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
2561 that project (from
2562 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
2563
2564 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
2565
2566 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
2567 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
2568 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
2569 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
2570 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
2571 based community mesh networks.</p>
2572
2573 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
2574 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
2575 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
2576 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
2577 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
2578 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
2579 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
2580 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
2581 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
2582
2583 <p><table>
2584 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
2585 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
2586 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
2587 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
2588 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
2589 </table></p>
2590
2591 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
2592 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
2593 VillageTelco about
2594 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
2595 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
2596 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
2597 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
2598 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
2599 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
2600
2601 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
2602 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
2603 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
2604 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
2605
2606 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
2607 us on IRC, either channel
2608 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
2609 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
2610 irc.freenode.net.</p>
2611
2612 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
2613 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
2614 and Innovation called
2615 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
2616 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
2617 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
2618 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
2619 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
2620 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
2621 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
2622 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
2623
2624 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
2625 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
2626 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
2627 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
2628 mesh system.</p>
2629
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="tags">
2632
2633
2634         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>.
2635
2636
2637       </div>
2638     </div>
2639     <div class="padding"></div>
2640
2641     <div class="entry">
2642       <div class="title">
2643         <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>
2644       </div>
2645       <div class="date">
2646          8th October 2013
2647       </div>
2648       <div class="body">
2649         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
2650 Salvador had published a
2651 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
2652 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
2653 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
2654 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
2655 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
2656 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
2657 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
2658 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
2659 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
2660 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
2661 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
2662 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
2663 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
2664 computers without hard drives by installing one central
2665 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
2666
2667 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
2668
2669 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
2670
2671 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
2672 me know. :)</p>
2673
2674       </div>
2675       <div class="tags">
2676
2677
2678         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>.
2679
2680
2681       </div>
2682     </div>
2683     <div class="padding"></div>
2684
2685     <div class="entry">
2686       <div class="title">
2687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
2688       </div>
2689       <div class="date">
2690         29th September 2013
2691       </div>
2692       <div class="body">
2693         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
2694 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
2695 complete announcement text can be found at
2696 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
2697 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
2698
2699 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
2700 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
2701 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
2702 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
2703
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="tags">
2706
2707
2708         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>.
2709
2710
2711       </div>
2712     </div>
2713     <div class="padding"></div>
2714
2715     <div class="entry">
2716       <div class="title">
2717         <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>
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="date">
2720         27th September 2013
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="body">
2723         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2724 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2725 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2726 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2727
2728 <ul>
2729
2730 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2731 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2732
2733 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2734 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2735
2736 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2737 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2738 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2739 (Youtube)</li>
2740
2741 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2742 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2743
2744 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2745 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2746
2747 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2748 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2749 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2750
2751 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2752 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2753 (Youtube)</li>
2754
2755 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2756 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2757
2758 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2759 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2760
2761 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2762 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2763 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2764
2765 </ul>
2766
2767 <p>A larger list is available from
2768 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2769 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2770
2771 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2772 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2773 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2774 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2775 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2776 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2777 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2778 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2779 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2780 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2781 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2782
2783       </div>
2784       <div class="tags">
2785
2786
2787         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>.
2788
2789
2790       </div>
2791     </div>
2792     <div class="padding"></div>
2793
2794     <div class="entry">
2795       <div class="title">
2796         <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>
2797       </div>
2798       <div class="date">
2799         16th September 2013
2800       </div>
2801       <div class="body">
2802         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2803 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
2804
2805 <blockquote>
2806 <p>Hi,</p>
2807
2808 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
2809 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2810 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
2811
2812 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
2813 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
2814 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
2815 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
2816
2817 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
2818 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
2819
2820 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
2821 compared to beta1:</p>
2822
2823 <ul>
2824
2825 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
2826 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
2827 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
2828 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
2829 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
2830 main server.</li>
2831 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
2832 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
2833 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
2834 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
2835 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
2836
2837 </ul>
2838
2839 <p>Where to get it:</p>
2840
2841 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2842
2843 <ul>
2844 <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>
2845 <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>
2846 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
2847 </ul>
2848
2849 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
2850
2851 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
2852 <ul>
2853 <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>
2854 <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>
2855 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
2856 </ul>
2857
2858 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
2859
2860 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
2861 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
2862 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
2863 as the other isos.</p>
2864
2865 <p>How to report bugs</p>
2866
2867 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
2868 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
2869
2870
2871 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
2872
2873 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2874 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2875 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2876 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2877 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2878 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2879 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2880 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2881 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2882 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2883 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2884 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2885 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2886
2887 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2888 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2889 Squeeze release.</p>
2890
2891 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
2892
2893 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
2894 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
2895 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
2896 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
2897 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
2898 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
2899 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
2900 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
2901 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
2902 directory.</p>
2903
2904
2905 <p>cheers,
2906 <br>        Holger</p>
2907 </blockquote>
2908
2909       </div>
2910       <div class="tags">
2911
2912
2913         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>.
2914
2915
2916       </div>
2917     </div>
2918     <div class="padding"></div>
2919
2920     <div class="entry">
2921       <div class="title">
2922         <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>
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="date">
2925         10th September 2013
2926       </div>
2927       <div class="body">
2928         <p>I was introduced to the
2929 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2930 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2931 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2932 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2933 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2934 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2935 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2936 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2937
2938 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2939 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2940 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2941 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2942 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2943
2944 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2945 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2946 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2947 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2948 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2949 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2950 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2951 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2952 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2953 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2954 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2955 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2956 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2957 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2958 missing in Debian).</p>
2959
2960 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2961 scripts
2962 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2963 and a administrative web interface
2964 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2965 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2966 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2967 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2968 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2969 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2970 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2971 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2972 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2973 this is really working yet, see
2974 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2975 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2976 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2977 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2978 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2979 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2980 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2981
2982 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2983 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2984 at.</p>
2985
2986 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2987
2988 <ol>
2989
2990 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2991 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2992 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2993 to the Debian installer:<p>
2994 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2995
2996 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2997 install on.</li>
2998
2999 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3000 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3001
3002 </ol>
3003
3004 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3005
3006 <ol>
3007
3008 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3009 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3010 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3011 <pre>
3012 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3013 </pre></li>
3014 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3015 <pre>
3016 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3017    apt-key add -
3018 apt-get update
3019 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3020 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3021 </pre></li>
3022 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3023
3024 </ol>
3025
3026 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3027 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3028 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3029 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3030 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3031
3032 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3033 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3034 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3035 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3036
3037 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3038 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3039 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3040 irc.debian.org and the
3041 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3042 mailing list</a>.</p>
3043
3044 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3045 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3046 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3047 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3048 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3049 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3050
3051       </div>
3052       <div class="tags">
3053
3054
3055         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>.
3056
3057
3058       </div>
3059     </div>
3060     <div class="padding"></div>
3061
3062     <div class="entry">
3063       <div class="title">
3064         <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>
3065       </div>
3066       <div class="date">
3067         22nd August 2013
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="body">
3070         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3071 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
3072 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
3073
3074 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
3075
3076 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3077 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3078
3079 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3080
3081 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3082 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3083 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3084 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3085 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3086 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3087 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3088 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
3089 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3090 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3091 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3092 desktop contains
3093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3094 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3095 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3096 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3097
3098 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
3099 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
3100 release.</p>
3101
3102 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3103 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3104 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
3105 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
3106 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
3107 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
3108 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
3109 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
3110 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
3111 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
3112 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
3113
3114 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3115
3116 <ul>
3117
3118 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
3119     work also without a attached tty.</li>
3120 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
3121     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
3122     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
3123     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
3124     required).</li>
3125
3126 </ul>
3127
3128 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3129
3130 <ul>
3131
3132 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
3133 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
3134 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
3135 stick ISO image.</li>
3136 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
3137 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
3138 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
3139     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
3140     cope with this.</li>
3141 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
3142 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
3143     empty password hashes.</li>
3144 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
3145     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
3146     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
3147
3148 </ul>
3149
3150 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3151
3152 <ul>
3153
3154 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
3155     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
3156 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
3157     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
3158
3159 </ul>
3160
3161 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3162
3163 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3164
3165 <ul>
3166
3167 <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>
3168
3169 <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>
3170
3171 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
3172
3173 </ul>
3174
3175 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
3176 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
3177
3178 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3179
3180 <ul>
3181
3182 <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>
3183 <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>
3184 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
3185
3186 </ul>
3187
3188 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
3189 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
3190
3191
3192 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3193
3194 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3195
3196       </div>
3197       <div class="tags">
3198
3199
3200         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>.
3201
3202
3203       </div>
3204     </div>
3205     <div class="padding"></div>
3206
3207     <div class="entry">
3208       <div class="title">
3209         <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>
3210       </div>
3211       <div class="date">
3212         18th August 2013
3213       </div>
3214       <div class="body">
3215         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3216 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3217 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3218 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3219 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3220 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3221 currently on the disk.</p>
3222
3223 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3224 <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>
3225 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3226 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3227 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3228 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3229 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3230 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3231 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3232 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3233 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3234 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3235 the broken disks.</p>
3236
3237       </div>
3238       <div class="tags">
3239
3240
3241         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>.
3242
3243
3244       </div>
3245     </div>
3246     <div class="padding"></div>
3247
3248     <div class="entry">
3249       <div class="title">
3250         <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>
3251       </div>
3252       <div class="date">
3253          2nd August 2013
3254       </div>
3255       <div class="body">
3256         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
3257 have worked on a Norwegian
3258 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3259 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3260 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
3261 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
3262 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
3263 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
3264 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
3265 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
3266 progress of the translation:</p>
3267
3268 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3269
3270 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
3271 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
3272 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
3273 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
3274 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
3275 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
3276 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
3277 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
3278 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
3279 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
3280 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
3281
3282 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3283 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3284 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3285 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
3286 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
3287 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
3288 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
3289 project files currently available from
3290 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3291
3292 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3293 the updated
3294 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3295 and
3296 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3297 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3298 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3299 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3300
3301       </div>
3302       <div class="tags">
3303
3304
3305         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>.
3306
3307
3308       </div>
3309     </div>
3310     <div class="padding"></div>
3311
3312     <div class="entry">
3313       <div class="title">
3314         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3315       </div>
3316       <div class="date">
3317         27th July 2013
3318       </div>
3319       <div class="body">
3320         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3321 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3322
3323 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
3324 2013-07-27</strong></p>
3325
3326 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3327 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3328
3329 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3330
3331 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3332 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3333 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3334 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3335 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3336 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3337 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3338 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3339 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3340 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3341 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3342 desktop contains
3343 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3344 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3345 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3346 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3347
3348 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3349 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3350 Squeeze release.</p>
3351
3352 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3353 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3354 release.</p>
3355
3356 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3357
3358 <ul>
3359
3360 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
3361    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
3362 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
3363    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
3364    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
3365    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
3366    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
3367 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
3368 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
3369 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
3370    crash bugs.</li>
3371
3372 </ul>
3373
3374 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3375
3376 <ul>
3377
3378 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
3379    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
3380 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
3381    netinst CD.</li>
3382 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
3383    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
3384 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
3385    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
3386    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
3387 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
3388    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
3389    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
3390 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
3391    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
3392    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
3393 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
3394    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
3395 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
3396
3397 </ul>
3398
3399 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3400
3401 <ul>
3402
3403 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
3404 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
3405     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
3406 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
3407
3408 </ul>
3409
3410 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3411
3412 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3413
3414 <ul>
3415
3416 <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>
3417
3418 <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>
3419
3420 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
3421
3422 </ul>
3423
3424 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
3425 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
3426
3427 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3428
3429 <ul>
3430
3431 <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>
3432 <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>
3433 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
3434
3435 </ul>
3436
3437 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
3438 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
3439
3440
3441 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3442
3443 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
3444
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="tags">
3447
3448
3449         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>.
3450
3451
3452       </div>
3453     </div>
3454     <div class="padding"></div>
3455
3456     <div class="entry">
3457       <div class="title">
3458         <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>
3459       </div>
3460       <div class="date">
3461         17th July 2013
3462       </div>
3463       <div class="body">
3464         <p>Today I switched to
3465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3466 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3467 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3468 <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
3469 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3470 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3471 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3472 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3473 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3474 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3475 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3476 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3477 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3478 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3479 station from now on.</p>
3480
3481 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3482 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3483 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3484 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3485 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3486 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3487 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3488 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3489 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3490 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3491 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3492 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3493
3494 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3495 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3496 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3497 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3498 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3499 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3500 parameters are tuned:</p>
3501
3502 <ul>
3503
3504 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3505     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3506
3507 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3508     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3509     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3510
3511 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3512     systems.</li>
3513
3514 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3515     /etc/fstab.</li>
3516
3517 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3518
3519 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3520     cron.daily).</li>
3521
3522 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3523     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3524
3525 </ul>
3526
3527 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3528 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3529 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3530 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3531 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3532 from getting the data on the disk (see
3533 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3534 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3535 right thing to do.</p>
3536
3537 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3538 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3539 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3540
3541 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3542 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3543 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3544 instead of during my work.</p>
3545
3546 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3547 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3548
3549 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3550 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3551 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3552
3553 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3554 there.</p>
3555
3556 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3557 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3558 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3559 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3560 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3561 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3562 back.</p>
3563
3564       </div>
3565       <div class="tags">
3566
3567
3568         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>.
3569
3570
3571       </div>
3572     </div>
3573     <div class="padding"></div>
3574
3575     <div class="entry">
3576       <div class="title">
3577         <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>
3578       </div>
3579       <div class="date">
3580         10th July 2013
3581       </div>
3582       <div class="body">
3583         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3584 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3585 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3586 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3587 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3588 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3589 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3590 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3591
3592 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3593 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3594 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3595 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3596 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3597 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3598 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3599 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3600 lock up when I download a new
3601 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3602 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3603 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3604
3605 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3606 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3607 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3608 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3609 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3610 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3611
3612 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3613 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3614 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3615 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3616 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3617 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3618
3619 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3620 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3621 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3622 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3623 exist).</p>
3624
3625       </div>
3626       <div class="tags">
3627
3628
3629         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>.
3630
3631
3632       </div>
3633     </div>
3634     <div class="padding"></div>
3635
3636     <div class="entry">
3637       <div class="title">
3638         <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>
3639       </div>
3640       <div class="date">
3641          9th July 2013
3642       </div>
3643       <div class="body">
3644         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3645 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3646 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3647 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3648 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3649 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3650 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3651
3652 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3653 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3654 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3655 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3656 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3657
3658       </div>
3659       <div class="tags">
3660
3661
3662         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>.
3663
3664
3665       </div>
3666     </div>
3667     <div class="padding"></div>
3668
3669     <div class="entry">
3670       <div class="title">
3671         <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>
3672       </div>
3673       <div class="date">
3674          5th July 2013
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="body">
3677         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3678 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3679 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3680 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3681 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3682 ended up picking a
3683 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3684 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3685 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3686 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3687 on that below.</p>
3688
3689 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3690 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3691 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3692 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3693 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3694 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3695 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3696 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3697 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3698
3699 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3700 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3701 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3702 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3703 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3704 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3705 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3706
3707 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3708 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3709
3710 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3711 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3712 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3713 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3714 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3715 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3716 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3717 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3718 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3719 kernel developers as
3720 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3721 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3722 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3723 Lenovo forums, both for
3724 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3725 2012-11-10</a> and for
3726 <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
3727 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3728 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3729 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3730 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3731 There is even a
3732 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3733 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3734 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3735
3736 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3737 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3738 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3739 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3740 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3741 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3742 fixed. :)</p>
3743
3744       </div>
3745       <div class="tags">
3746
3747
3748         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>.
3749
3750
3751       </div>
3752     </div>
3753     <div class="padding"></div>
3754
3755     <div class="entry">
3756       <div class="title">
3757         <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>
3758       </div>
3759       <div class="date">
3760          4th July 2013
3761       </div>
3762       <div class="body">
3763         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3764 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3765 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3766 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3767 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3768 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3769 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3770 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3771 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3772
3773 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3774 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3775 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3776 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3777 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3778 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3779 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3780
3781 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3782 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3783 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3784 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3785 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3786 new laptop now. :)</p>
3787
3788 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3789
3790       </div>
3791       <div class="tags">
3792
3793
3794         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>.
3795
3796
3797       </div>
3798     </div>
3799     <div class="padding"></div>
3800
3801     <div class="entry">
3802       <div class="title">
3803         <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>
3804       </div>
3805       <div class="date">
3806          3rd July 2013
3807       </div>
3808       <div class="body">
3809         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3810 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3811
3812 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
3813 2013-07-03</strong></p>
3814
3815 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3816 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3817
3818 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3819
3820 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3821 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3822 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3823 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
3824 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3825 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3826 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3827 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3828 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
3829 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
3830 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
3831 desktop contains
3832 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
3833 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
3834 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
3835 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3836
3837 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3838 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3839 Squeeze release.</p>
3840
3841 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3842 <ul>
3843   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
3844   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
3845     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
3846     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
3847   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
3848     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
3849     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
3850   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
3851     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
3852     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
3853     too.</li>
3854   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
3855     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
3856 </ul>
3857 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3858 <ul>
3859   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
3860   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
3861   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
3862     up for some language options.</li>
3863   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
3864   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
3865   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
3866     d-i is doing it.</li>
3867   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
3868     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
3869   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
3870     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
3871     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
3872   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
3873     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
3874   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
3875   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
3876     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
3877   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
3878     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
3879 </ul>
3880 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3881 <ul>
3882   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3883     available yet (698840).</li>
3884   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
3885 </ul>
3886 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3887
3888 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3889 <ul>
3890   <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>
3891   <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>
3892   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
3893 </ul>
3894
3895 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
3896 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
3897
3898 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
3899 <ul>
3900   <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>
3901   <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>
3902   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
3903 </ul>
3904
3905 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
3906 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
3907
3908 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3909
3910 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3911
3912       </div>
3913       <div class="tags">
3914
3915
3916         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>.
3917
3918
3919       </div>
3920     </div>
3921     <div class="padding"></div>
3922
3923     <div class="entry">
3924       <div class="title">
3925         <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>
3926       </div>
3927       <div class="date">
3928         25th June 2013
3929       </div>
3930       <div class="body">
3931         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3932 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3933 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3934 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3935 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3936 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3937 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3938 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3939 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3940 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3941 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3942
3943 <p><pre>
3944 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3945 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3946 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3947 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3948 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3949 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3950 firmware-ipw2x00
3951 firmware-ipw2x00
3952 Preconfiguring packages ...
3953 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3954 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3955 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3956 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3957 #
3958 </pre></p>
3959
3960 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3961 printed instead:</p>
3962
3963 <p><pre>
3964 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3965 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3966 #
3967 </pre></p>
3968
3969 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3970 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3971
3972 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3973 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3974 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3975 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3976 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3977 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3978 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3979 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3980 machine.</p>
3981
3982 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3983 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3984 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3985 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3986 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3987 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3988
3989       </div>
3990       <div class="tags">
3991
3992
3993         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>.
3994
3995
3996       </div>
3997     </div>
3998     <div class="padding"></div>
3999
4000     <div class="entry">
4001       <div class="title">
4002         <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>
4003       </div>
4004       <div class="date">
4005         22nd June 2013
4006       </div>
4007       <div class="body">
4008         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4009 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
4010 which check that services are running, working, and return the
4011 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
4012 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
4013 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
4014 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
4015 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
4016 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
4017
4018 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
4019 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
4020 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
4021 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
4022 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
4023 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
4024 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
4025 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
4026 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
4027 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
4028 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
4029 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
4030 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
4031 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
4032
4033 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
4034 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
4035 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
4036 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
4037 the problem.</p>
4038
4039 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
4040 please join us on
4041 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
4042 irc.debian.org</a> and the
4043 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
4044 list.</p>
4045
4046       </div>
4047       <div class="tags">
4048
4049
4050         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>.
4051
4052
4053       </div>
4054     </div>
4055     <div class="padding"></div>
4056
4057     <div class="entry">
4058       <div class="title">
4059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
4060       </div>
4061       <div class="date">
4062         17th June 2013
4063       </div>
4064       <div class="body">
4065         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4066 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
4067 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
4068 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
4069 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
4070 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
4071 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
4072 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
4073
4074 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4075
4076 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
4077 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
4078 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
4079 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
4080 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
4081 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
4082 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
4083 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
4084 field.</p>
4085
4086 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
4087 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
4088 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
4089 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
4090 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
4091 the only one we have in our country.</p>
4092
4093 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4094 project?</strong></p>
4095
4096 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
4097 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
4098 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
4099 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
4100 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
4101 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
4102 ways to contribute.</p>
4103
4104 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
4105 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
4106 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
4107 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
4108 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
4109 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
4110 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
4111 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
4112 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
4113 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
4114
4115 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4116 Edu?</strong></p>
4117
4118 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
4119 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
4120 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
4121 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
4122 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
4123 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
4124 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
4125 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
4126
4127 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
4128 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
4129 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
4130 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
4131 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
4132 project.</p>
4133
4134 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4135 Edu?</strong></p>
4136
4137 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
4138 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
4139 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
4140 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
4141 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
4142 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
4143 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
4144 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
4145 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
4146
4147 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
4148 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
4149 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
4150 on.</p>
4151
4152 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4153
4154 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
4155 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
4156 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
4157 Enlightenment project a lot!),
4158 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
4159 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
4160 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
4161 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
4162 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
4163
4164 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4165 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4166
4167 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
4168 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
4169 that:</p>
4170
4171 <ul>
4172
4173 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
4174
4175 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
4176     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
4177     of teenagers more?</li>
4178
4179 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
4180     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
4181     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
4182     them!)</li>
4183
4184 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
4185     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
4186     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
4187
4188 </ul>
4189
4190 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
4191 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
4192 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
4193 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
4194 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
4195
4196       </div>
4197       <div class="tags">
4198
4199
4200         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>.
4201
4202
4203       </div>
4204     </div>
4205     <div class="padding"></div>
4206
4207     <div class="entry">
4208       <div class="title">
4209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
4210       </div>
4211       <div class="date">
4212         12th June 2013
4213       </div>
4214       <div class="body">
4215         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
4216 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4217 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
4218 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
4219 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
4220 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
4221
4222 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4223
4224 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
4225 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
4226 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
4227
4228 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
4229 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
4230 each other.</p>
4231
4232 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4233 project?</strong></p>
4234
4235 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
4236 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
4237 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
4238 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
4239 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
4240 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
4241 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
4242 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
4243 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
4244 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
4245 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
4246 we'll get there one day.</p>
4247
4248 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4249 Edu?</strong></p>
4250
4251 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
4252 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
4253 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
4254 very high quality work.</p>
4255
4256 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
4257 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
4258 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
4259 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
4260 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
4261
4262 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4263 Edu?</strong></p>
4264
4265 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
4266 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
4267 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
4268
4269 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
4270 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
4271 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
4272 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
4273 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
4274 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
4275 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
4276 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
4277 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
4278 currently.</p>
4279
4280 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
4281 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
4282 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
4283 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
4284 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
4285 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
4286 autonomous.</p>
4287
4288 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4289
4290 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
4291 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
4292 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
4293 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
4294 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
4295
4296 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
4297 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
4298 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
4299 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
4300 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
4301 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
4302 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
4303 X.</p>
4304
4305 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
4306 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
4307 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
4308 it :p)
4309
4310 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4311 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4312
4313 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
4314 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
4315 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
4316 that.</p>
4317
4318 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
4319 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
4320 advantage of that.</p>
4321
4322 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
4323 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
4324 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
4325 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
4326 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
4327 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
4328 best solution for them.</p>
4329
4330 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
4331 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
4332 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
4333
4334       </div>
4335       <div class="tags">
4336
4337
4338         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>.
4339
4340
4341       </div>
4342     </div>
4343     <div class="padding"></div>
4344
4345     <div class="entry">
4346       <div class="title">
4347         <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>
4348       </div>
4349       <div class="date">
4350         11th June 2013
4351       </div>
4352       <div class="body">
4353         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4354 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4355 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4356 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4357 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4358 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4359 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4360 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4361 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4362 i915 driver used by the
4363 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4364 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4365
4366 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4367 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4368 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4369 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4370 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4371
4372 <pre>
4373 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4374 update-initramfs -u -k all
4375 </pre>
4376
4377 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4378 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4379 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4380 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4381 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4382 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4383 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4384 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4385 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4386 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4387 number.</p>
4388
4389 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4390 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4391
4392 <p><pre>
4393 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4394     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4395     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4396  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4397  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4398     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4399  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4400     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4401  Latency: 0
4402  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4403  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4404  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4405  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4406  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4407  Capabilities: <access denied>
4408  Kernel driver in use: i915
4409 </pre></p>
4410
4411 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4412
4413 <p><pre>
4414 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4415        ...
4416         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4417         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4418        ...
4419 }
4420 </pre></p>
4421
4422 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4423 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4424 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4425 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4426 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4427 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4428 yet shown up in
4429 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4430 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4431 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4432 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4433 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4434 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4435
4436 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4437 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4438 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4439 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4440 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4441 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4442 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4443 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4444 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4445 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4446 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4447 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4448
4449 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4450 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4451 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4452 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4453 backlight.</p>
4454
4455       </div>
4456       <div class="tags">
4457
4458
4459         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>.
4460
4461
4462       </div>
4463     </div>
4464     <div class="padding"></div>
4465
4466     <div class="entry">
4467       <div class="title">
4468         <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>
4469       </div>
4470       <div class="date">
4471         10th June 2013
4472       </div>
4473       <div class="body">
4474         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4475 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4476
4477 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
4478 2013-06-10</strong></p>
4479
4480 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
4481 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4482
4483 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4484
4485 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4486 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4487 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4488 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4489 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4490 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4491 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4492 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4493 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4494 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4495 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4496 desktop contains
4497 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4498 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4499 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4500 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4501
4502 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4503 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4504 Squeeze release.</p>
4505
4506 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4507
4508 <ul>
4509
4510 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
4511 <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).
4512 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
4513 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
4514 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
4515
4516 </ul>
4517
4518 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4519
4520 <ul>
4521
4522 <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.
4523 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
4524 <li>New Romanian translation.
4525 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
4526 <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).
4527 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
4528 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
4529 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
4530 <li>More testsuite tests.
4531 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
4532 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
4533
4534 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
4535 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
4536
4537 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
4538 them up with GOsa².</li>
4539
4540 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
4541
4542 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
4543 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
4544 entered password). </li>
4545
4546 </ul>
4547
4548 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4549
4550 <ul>
4551
4552 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
4553
4554 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4555 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
4556 missing import feature).</li>
4557
4558 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
4559
4560 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
4561 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
4562 unfixed.</li>
4563
4564 </ul>
4565
4566 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4567
4568 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4569
4570 <ul>
4571
4572 <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>
4573
4574 <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>
4575
4576 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
4577
4578 </ul>
4579
4580 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
4581 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
4582
4583 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4584
4585 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4586
4587       </div>
4588       <div class="tags">
4589
4590
4591         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>.
4592
4593
4594       </div>
4595     </div>
4596     <div class="padding"></div>
4597
4598     <div class="entry">
4599       <div class="title">
4600         <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>
4601       </div>
4602       <div class="date">
4603          5th June 2013
4604       </div>
4605       <div class="body">
4606         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
4607 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
4608 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
4609 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
4610 the project:
4611
4612 <ol>
4613
4614 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
4615   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
4616   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
4617   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
4618   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
4619
4620 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
4621   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
4622   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
4623   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
4624   #698840</a>.</li>
4625
4626 </ol>
4627
4628 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
4629 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
4630 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
4631
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="tags">
4634
4635
4636         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>.
4637
4638
4639       </div>
4640     </div>
4641     <div class="padding"></div>
4642
4643     <div class="entry">
4644       <div class="title">
4645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
4646       </div>
4647       <div class="date">
4648          4th June 2013
4649       </div>
4650       <div class="body">
4651         <p>It has been a while since my last English
4652 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4653 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
4654 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
4655 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
4656 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
4657
4658 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4659
4660 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
4661 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
4662 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
4663 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
4664
4665 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
4666 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
4667 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
4668
4669 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4670 project?</strong></p>
4671
4672 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
4673 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
4674 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
4675 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
4676 manual.
4677
4678 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
4679 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
4680 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
4681 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
4682
4683 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
4684 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
4685 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
4686 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
4687 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
4688 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
4689 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
4690 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
4691 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
4692 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
4693
4694 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
4695 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
4696 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
4697 beautiful project.</p>
4698
4699 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4700 Edu?</strong></p>
4701
4702 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
4703 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
4704 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
4705
4706 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
4707 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
4708 of educational free software.</p>
4709
4710 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4711 Edu?</strong></p>
4712
4713 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
4714 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
4715 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
4716 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
4717 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
4718
4719 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
4720 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
4721 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
4722 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
4723 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
4724 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
4725 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
4726 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
4727
4728 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4729
4730 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
4731 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
4732 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
4733 also using the mathematical software
4734 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
4735 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
4736 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
4737
4738 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
4739 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
4740 statistics?</strong></p>
4741
4742 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
4743 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
4744 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
4745 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
4746
4747 <ul>
4748
4749 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
4750 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
4751 constructions in planar geometry
4752
4753 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
4754 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
4755 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
4756
4757 </ul>
4758
4759 <p>I like also
4760 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
4761 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
4762 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
4763
4764 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4765 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4766
4767 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
4768
4769 <ul>
4770
4771 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
4772
4773 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
4774     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
4775     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
4776
4777 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
4778
4779 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
4780     system.</li>
4781
4782 </ul>
4783
4784       </div>
4785       <div class="tags">
4786
4787
4788         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>.
4789
4790
4791       </div>
4792     </div>
4793     <div class="padding"></div>
4794
4795     <div class="entry">
4796       <div class="title">
4797         <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>
4798       </div>
4799       <div class="date">
4800          1st June 2013
4801       </div>
4802       <div class="body">
4803         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4804 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
4805 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
4806 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
4807 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
4808 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
4809 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
4810 program.</p>
4811
4812 <!-- 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 -->
4813
4814 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
4815 <p>
4816 <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>
4817 <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>
4818 <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>
4819 <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>
4820 <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>
4821 <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>
4822 <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>
4823 <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>
4824 <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>
4825 <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>
4826 <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>
4827 <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>
4828 <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>
4829 <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>
4830 </p>
4831
4832 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
4833 <p>
4834 <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>
4835 <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>
4836 <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>
4837 <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>
4838 <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>
4839 <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>
4840 </p>
4841
4842 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
4843 <p>
4844 <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>
4845 </p>
4846
4847 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
4848 <p>
4849 <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>
4850 <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>
4851 <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>
4852 <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>
4853 <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>
4854 <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>
4855 <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>
4856 <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>
4857 <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>
4858 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
4859 <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>
4860 </p>
4861
4862 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
4863 <p>
4864 <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>
4865 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
4866 </p>
4867
4868 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
4869 <p>
4870 <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>
4871 <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>
4872 <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>
4873 </p>
4874
4875 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
4876 <p>
4877 <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>
4878 <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>
4879 <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>
4880 <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>
4881 <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>
4882 </p>
4883
4884 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
4885 <p>
4886 <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>
4887 <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>
4888 <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>
4889 <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>
4890 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
4891 <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>
4892 <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>
4893 <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>
4894 <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>
4895 <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>
4896 <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>
4897 <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>
4898 <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>
4899 <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>
4900 <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>
4901 <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>
4902 <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>
4903 </p>
4904
4905 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
4906 <p>
4907 <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>
4908 <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>
4909 </p>
4910
4911 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
4912 <p>
4913 <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>
4914 <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>
4915 <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>
4916 <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>
4917 <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>
4918 <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>
4919 <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>
4920 <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>
4921 <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>
4922 <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>
4923 </p>
4924
4925 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
4926 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
4927 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
4928 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
4929 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
4930 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
4931 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
4932
4933       </div>
4934       <div class="tags">
4935
4936
4937         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>.
4938
4939
4940       </div>
4941     </div>
4942     <div class="padding"></div>
4943
4944     <div class="entry">
4945       <div class="title">
4946         <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>
4947       </div>
4948       <div class="date">
4949         27th May 2013
4950       </div>
4951       <div class="body">
4952         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4953 <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
4954 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4955 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4956 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4957 and Windows 8.</p>
4958
4959 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4960 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4961 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4962 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4963 enough to tell.</p>
4964
4965 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4966 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4967 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4968 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4969 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4970 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4971 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4972 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4973 to follow.</p>
4974
4975 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4976 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4977 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4978 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4979 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4980 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4981 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4982 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4983
4984 <p>I've updated the
4985 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4986 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4987 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4988 machine.</p>
4989
4990 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4991 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4992
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="tags">
4995
4996
4997         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>.
4998
4999
5000       </div>
5001     </div>
5002     <div class="padding"></div>
5003
5004     <div class="entry">
5005       <div class="title">
5006         <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>
5007       </div>
5008       <div class="date">
5009         25th May 2013
5010       </div>
5011       <div class="body">
5012         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5013 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5014 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5015 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5016 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5017 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
5018
5019 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5020 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5021 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5022 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5023 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5024 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5025 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5026 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5027 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5028 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
5029
5030 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5031 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5032 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5033 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5034 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5035 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
5036
5037 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
5038 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
5039 on new Laptops?</p>
5040
5041       </div>
5042       <div class="tags">
5043
5044
5045         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>.
5046
5047
5048       </div>
5049     </div>
5050     <div class="padding"></div>
5051
5052     <div class="entry">
5053       <div class="title">
5054         <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>
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="date">
5057         17th May 2013
5058       </div>
5059       <div class="body">
5060         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
5061 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
5062 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
5063 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
5064 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
5065 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
5066 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
5067 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
5068 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
5069 donate some money</a>.
5070
5071 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
5072 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
5073 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
5074 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
5075 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
5076
5077 <p>The script,
5078 <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/>
5079 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
5080 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
5081 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
5082
5083 <ol>
5084
5085 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
5086 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
5087 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
5088     our configuration.</li>
5089 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
5090     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
5091     according to the profile specified in the config above,
5092     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
5093 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
5094     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
5095 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
5096
5097 </ol>
5098
5099 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
5100 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
5101 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
5102 the needed packages.</p>
5103
5104 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
5105 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
5106 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
5107 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
5108 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
5109 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
5110
5111 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
5112 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
5113 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
5114
5115 <p><pre>
5116 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
5117 DESKTOP="lxde"
5118 </pre></p>
5119
5120 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
5121 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
5122 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
5123 boot.</p>
5124
5125       </div>
5126       <div class="tags">
5127
5128
5129         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>.
5130
5131
5132       </div>
5133     </div>
5134     <div class="padding"></div>
5135
5136     <div class="entry">
5137       <div class="title">
5138         <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>
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="date">
5141         14th May 2013
5142       </div>
5143       <div class="body">
5144         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5145 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
5146 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5147
5148 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
5149 2013-05-14</strong></p>
5150
5151 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
5152 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
5153 codename "Wheezy".</p>
5154
5155 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5156
5157 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5158 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5159 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
5160 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5161 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5162 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5163 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
5164 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
5165
5166 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
5167 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
5168 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
5169
5170 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5171 <ul>
5172   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
5173     default.</li>
5174   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
5175   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
5176   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
5177     ibus-anthy.</li>
5178 </ul>
5179
5180 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5181 <ul>
5182
5183   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
5184     reliability improvements.</li>
5185   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
5186     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
5187   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
5188     problems.</li>
5189   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
5190     direct:// URL.</li>
5191   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
5192   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
5193   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
5194   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
5195     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
5196   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
5197     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
5198 </ul>
5199
5200 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5201 <ul>
5202
5203   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
5204     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
5205     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
5206   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
5207   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5208     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
5209   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
5210   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
5211   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
5212     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
5213   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
5214     password submission problem
5215     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
5216
5217 </ul>
5218
5219 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5220
5221 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5222 <ul>
5223
5224   <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>
5225   <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>
5226   <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>
5227
5228 </ul>
5229
5230 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
5231
5232 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
5233
5234 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5235
5236 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5237
5238       </div>
5239       <div class="tags">
5240
5241
5242         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>.
5243
5244
5245       </div>
5246     </div>
5247     <div class="padding"></div>
5248
5249     <div class="entry">
5250       <div class="title">
5251         <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>
5252       </div>
5253       <div class="date">
5254         11th May 2013
5255       </div>
5256       <div class="body">
5257         <P>In January,
5258 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
5259 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
5260 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
5261 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
5262 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
5263 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
5264 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
5265 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
5266 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
5267 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
5268 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
5269 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
5270
5271 <p><table>
5272 <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>
5273 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
5274 <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>
5275 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
5276 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
5277 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
5278 <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>
5279 <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>
5280 <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>
5281 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
5282 </table></p>
5283
5284 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
5285 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
5286 available in experimental.</p>
5287
5288 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
5289 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
5290 for LEGO designers.</p>
5291
5292       </div>
5293       <div class="tags">
5294
5295
5296         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>.
5297
5298
5299       </div>
5300     </div>
5301     <div class="padding"></div>
5302
5303     <div class="entry">
5304       <div class="title">
5305         <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>
5306       </div>
5307       <div class="date">
5308          5th May 2013
5309       </div>
5310       <div class="body">
5311         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
5312 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
5313 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
5314 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
5315 soon.</p>
5316
5317 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
5318 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
5319 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
5320 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
5321 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
5322 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
5323 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
5324 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
5325 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
5326 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
5327 Edu.</a>
5328
5329 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
5330 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
5331 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
5332 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
5333 follow.<p>
5334
5335       </div>
5336       <div class="tags">
5337
5338
5339         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>.
5340
5341
5342       </div>
5343     </div>
5344     <div class="padding"></div>
5345
5346     <div class="entry">
5347       <div class="title">
5348         <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>
5349       </div>
5350       <div class="date">
5351         26th April 2013
5352       </div>
5353       <div class="body">
5354         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
5355 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
5356 announcement:</p>
5357
5358 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
5359 2013-04-26</strong></p>
5360
5361 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
5362 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5363
5364 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5365
5366 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5367 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5368 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5369 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
5370 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5371 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5372 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5373 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5374 installed via the network.</p>
5375
5376 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
5377 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
5378 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
5379
5380 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5381
5382 <ul>
5383 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
5384   <ul>
5385      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
5386      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
5387          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
5388          manual.)</li>
5389      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
5390      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
5391      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
5392      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
5393      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
5394      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
5395      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
5396      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
5397      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
5398      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
5399      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
5400      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
5401          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
5402          manual</a> for more details.</li>
5403      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
5404          installation.</li>
5405      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
5406          <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>
5407   </ul></li>
5408 </ul>
5409
5410 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
5411 <ul>
5412 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
5413     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
5414     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
5415 </ul>
5416
5417 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
5418 <ul>
5419 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
5420     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
5421     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
5422 </ul>
5423
5424 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5425 <ul>
5426 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
5427     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
5428     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
5429 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
5430     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
5431     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
5432 </ul>
5433
5434 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
5435 <ul>
5436 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
5437     yet.</li>
5438 </ul>
5439
5440 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
5441
5442 <ul>
5443 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
5444     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
5445     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
5446 </ul>
5447
5448 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5449
5450 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
5451 <ul>
5452 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5453 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
5454 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
5455 </ul>
5456
5457 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
5458
5459 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
5460
5461 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5462
5463 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5464
5465       </div>
5466       <div class="tags">
5467
5468
5469         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>.
5470
5471
5472       </div>
5473     </div>
5474     <div class="padding"></div>
5475
5476     <div class="entry">
5477       <div class="title">
5478         <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>
5479       </div>
5480       <div class="date">
5481         16th April 2013
5482       </div>
5483       <div class="body">
5484         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
5485 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
5486 Details about the gathering can be found
5487 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
5488 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
5489 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
5490 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
5491 weekend.</p>
5492
5493 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
5494 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
5495 Edu release.</p>
5496
5497 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
5498
5499       </div>
5500       <div class="tags">
5501
5502
5503         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>.
5504
5505
5506       </div>
5507     </div>
5508     <div class="padding"></div>
5509
5510     <div class="entry">
5511       <div class="title">
5512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
5513       </div>
5514       <div class="date">
5515          3rd April 2013
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="body">
5518         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
5519 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
5520 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
5521 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
5522
5523 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
5524 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
5525 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
5526 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
5527 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
5528 BTS. :)</p>
5529
5530       </div>
5531       <div class="tags">
5532
5533
5534         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>.
5535
5536
5537       </div>
5538     </div>
5539     <div class="padding"></div>
5540
5541     <div class="entry">
5542       <div class="title">
5543         <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>
5544       </div>
5545       <div class="date">
5546         26th March 2013
5547       </div>
5548       <div class="body">
5549         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
5550 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
5551 font you use when printing.</p>
5552
5553 <p>Three years ago,
5554 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
5555 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
5556 changed their default front from
5557 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
5558 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
5559 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
5560 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
5561 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
5562 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
5563 prints.</p>
5564
5565 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
5566 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
5567 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
5568 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
5569 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
5570 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
5571 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
5572 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
5573 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
5574 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
5575 depend on the documents printed.</p>
5576
5577 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
5578 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
5579 and save some money in the process.</p>
5580
5581 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
5582 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
5583 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
5584 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
5585 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
5586 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
5587 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
5588 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
5589 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
5590
5591       </div>
5592       <div class="tags">
5593
5594
5595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5596
5597
5598       </div>
5599     </div>
5600     <div class="padding"></div>
5601
5602     <div class="entry">
5603       <div class="title">
5604         <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>
5605       </div>
5606       <div class="date">
5607         24th March 2013
5608       </div>
5609       <div class="body">
5610         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
5611 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
5612 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
5613 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
5614 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
5615 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
5616 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
5617 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
5618 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
5619 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
5620 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
5621 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
5622
5623 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
5624 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
5625 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
5626 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
5627 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
5628 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
5629 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
5630 all I had to do was to use the
5631 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
5632 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
5633 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
5634 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
5635 xsltproc/fop (aka
5636 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
5637 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
5638 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
5639 technical detail.</p>
5640
5641 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
5642 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
5643 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
5644 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
5645 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
5646 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
5647
5648 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
5649 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
5650 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
5651 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
5652 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
5653 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
5654 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
5655 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
5656 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
5657
5658 <p><blockquote><pre>
5659 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5660 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5661   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
5662     &lt;hr/&gt;
5663   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5664 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5665 </pre></blockquote></p>
5666
5667 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5668
5669 <p><blockquote><pre>
5670 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5671 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5672   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
5673     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
5674       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
5675     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
5676   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5677 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5678 </pre></blockquote></p>
5679
5680 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
5681 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
5682 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
5683 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
5684 enough.</p>
5685
5686 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
5687 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
5688 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
5689 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
5690 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
5691 look like this:</p>
5692
5693 <p><blockquote><pre>
5694 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5695 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
5696   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5697     &lt;br/&gt;
5698   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5699 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5700 </pre></blockquote></p>
5701
5702 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
5703
5704 <p><blockquote><pre>
5705 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
5706 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
5707   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
5708   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
5709     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
5710   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
5711 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
5712 </pre></blockquote></p>
5713
5714 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
5715 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
5716 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
5717 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
5718 page.</p>
5719
5720 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
5721 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
5722 github</a>
5723 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
5724 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
5725 days.</p>
5726
5727       </div>
5728       <div class="tags">
5729
5730
5731         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>.
5732
5733
5734       </div>
5735     </div>
5736     <div class="padding"></div>
5737
5738     <div class="entry">
5739       <div class="title">
5740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
5741       </div>
5742       <div class="date">
5743         17th March 2013
5744       </div>
5745       <div class="body">
5746         <p>Via
5747 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
5748 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
5749 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
5750 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5751 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
5752 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
5753 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
5754
5755 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
5756 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
5757
5758 <blockquote>
5759 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
5760 </blockquote>
5761
5762 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
5763
5764 <blockquote>
5765 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
5766 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
5767 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
5768 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
5769 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
5770 </blockquote>
5771
5772 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
5773 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
5774 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
5775 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
5776
5777 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
5778 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
5779
5780 <blockquote>
5781 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
5782 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
5783 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
5784 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
5785 </blockquote>
5786
5787 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
5788 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
5789 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
5790 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
5791 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
5792
5793 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
5794 embedding:</p>
5795
5796 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
5797
5798       </div>
5799       <div class="tags">
5800
5801
5802         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>.
5803
5804
5805       </div>
5806     </div>
5807     <div class="padding"></div>
5808
5809     <div class="entry">
5810       <div class="title">
5811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
5812       </div>
5813       <div class="date">
5814          8th March 2013
5815       </div>
5816       <div class="body">
5817         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
5818 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5819 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
5820 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5821 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
5822 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
5823 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
5824
5825 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
5826
5827 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
5828 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
5829
5830 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
5831 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
5832 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
5833 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
5834 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
5835 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
5836
5837 <p>Images are available for download at
5838 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
5839
5840 <p>md5sums:
5841 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5842 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5843 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5844
5845 <p>sha1sums:
5846 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
5847 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
5848 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
5849
5850 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
5851
5852 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
5853 2013-03-03:</p>
5854
5855 <ul>
5856   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
5857   <ul>
5858         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
5859         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
5860   </ul></li>
5861   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
5862   <ul>
5863         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
5864         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
5865   </ul></li>
5866   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
5867      <ul>
5868         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
5869         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
5870         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
5871                 Closes: #664596</li>
5872         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
5873                 Closes: #664976</li>
5874         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
5875            <ul>
5876                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
5877                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
5878            </ul></li>
5879         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
5880            <ul>
5881                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
5882                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
5883                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
5884                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
5885                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
5886            </ul></li>
5887         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
5888     </ul>
5889   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
5890     <ul>
5891         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
5892     </ul></li>
5893 </ul>
5894
5895 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
5896 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
5897 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
5898 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
5899
5900 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
5901 mailinglist
5902 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
5903 </p></blockquote>
5904
5905 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
5906
5907       </div>
5908       <div class="tags">
5909
5910
5911         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>.
5912
5913
5914       </div>
5915     </div>
5916     <div class="padding"></div>
5917
5918     <div class="entry">
5919       <div class="title">
5920         <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>
5921       </div>
5922       <div class="date">
5923          3rd March 2013
5924       </div>
5925       <div class="body">
5926         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
5927 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
5928 support using
5929 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
5930 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
5931 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
5932 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
5933 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
5934 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
5935 using the GNU LGPL, and
5936 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
5937
5938 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
5939 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
5940 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
5941 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
5942 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
5943 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
5944
5945 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
5946 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
5947 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
5948 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
5949 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
5950 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
5951 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
5952 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
5953 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
5954 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
5955 signal distribution is handled using
5956 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
5957 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
5958 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
5959 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
5960 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
5961 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
5962 them up a bit more first.</p>
5963
5964 <p>The development is coordinated on the
5965 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
5966 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
5967 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
5968 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
5969 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
5970 development.</p>
5971
5972       </div>
5973       <div class="tags">
5974
5975
5976         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>.
5977
5978
5979       </div>
5980     </div>
5981     <div class="padding"></div>
5982
5983     <div class="entry">
5984       <div class="title">
5985         <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>
5986       </div>
5987       <div class="date">
5988         27th February 2013
5989       </div>
5990       <div class="body">
5991         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
5992 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
5993 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
5994 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
5995 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
5996 (where I am the chair of the board) and
5997 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
5998 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
5999 GNU», with this description:
6000
6001 <p><blockquote>
6002 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
6003 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
6004 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
6005 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
6006 </blockquote></p>
6007
6008 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
6009 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
6010 am really curious how many will show up.  See
6011 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
6012 page</a> for the location details.</p>
6013
6014       </div>
6015       <div class="tags">
6016
6017
6018         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>.
6019
6020
6021       </div>
6022     </div>
6023     <div class="padding"></div>
6024
6025     <div class="entry">
6026       <div class="title">
6027         <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>
6028       </div>
6029       <div class="date">
6030         15th February 2013
6031       </div>
6032       <div class="body">
6033         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
6034 now a great source of free maps available from
6035 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
6036 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
6037 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
6038 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
6039 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
6040 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
6041 page for descriptions).</p>
6042
6043 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
6044 map you can just edit the
6045 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
6046 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
6047
6048       </div>
6049       <div class="tags">
6050
6051
6052         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>.
6053
6054
6055       </div>
6056     </div>
6057     <div class="padding"></div>
6058
6059     <div class="entry">
6060       <div class="title">
6061         <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>
6062       </div>
6063       <div class="date">
6064         12th February 2013
6065       </div>
6066       <div class="body">
6067         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
6068 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
6069 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
6070 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
6071 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
6072 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
6073 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
6074 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
6075 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
6076 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
6077 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
6078 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
6079 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
6080 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
6081 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
6082 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
6083
6084 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
6085 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
6086 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
6087 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
6088 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
6089 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
6090 fields:</p>
6091
6092 <p><pre>
6093 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6094 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6095 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
6096 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6097 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6098 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6099 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6100 </pre></p>
6101
6102 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
6103 answer regarding
6104 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
6105 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
6106 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
6107 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
6108
6109 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
6110
6111 <p><pre>
6112 BEGIN:VCARD
6113 VERSION:2.1
6114 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
6115 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
6116 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
6117 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
6118 REV:20130212T095000Z
6119 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6120 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6121 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6122 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6123 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6124 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6125 END:VCARD
6126 </pre></p>
6127
6128 <p>The resulting QR code created using
6129 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
6130 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
6131 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
6132 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
6133 system.</p>
6134
6135 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
6136
6137 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
6138 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
6139 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
6140 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
6141
6142 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
6143 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
6144
6145       </div>
6146       <div class="tags">
6147
6148
6149         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>.
6150
6151
6152       </div>
6153     </div>
6154     <div class="padding"></div>
6155
6156     <div class="entry">
6157       <div class="title">
6158         <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>
6159       </div>
6160       <div class="date">
6161         10th February 2013
6162       </div>
6163       <div class="body">
6164         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
6165
6166 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
6167 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
6168 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
6169 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
6170 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
6171 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
6172 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
6173 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
6174 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
6175 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
6176 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
6177
6178 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
6179 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
6180 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
6181 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
6182 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
6183 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
6184 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
6185 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
6186 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
6187 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
6188 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
6189 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
6190 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
6191 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
6192 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
6193 ones own
6194 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
6195 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
6196 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
6197 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
6198 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
6199 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
6200 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
6201 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
6202 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
6203 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
6204 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
6205
6206 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
6207 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
6208 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
6209 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
6210 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
6211 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
6212
6213 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
6214 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
6215 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
6216
6217       </div>
6218       <div class="tags">
6219
6220
6221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6222
6223
6224       </div>
6225     </div>
6226     <div class="padding"></div>
6227
6228     <div class="entry">
6229       <div class="title">
6230         <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>
6231       </div>
6232       <div class="date">
6233          2nd February 2013
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="body">
6236         <p>My
6237 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6238 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
6239 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
6240 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6241 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
6242 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6243 version too.</p>
6244
6245 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6246 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6247 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6248 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6249 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
6250 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6251 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
6252 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
6253
6254 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6255 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6256 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6257 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6258 it. :)</p>
6259
6260 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6261 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6262 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6263
6264       </div>
6265       <div class="tags">
6266
6267
6268         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>.
6269
6270
6271       </div>
6272     </div>
6273     <div class="padding"></div>
6274
6275     <div class="entry">
6276       <div class="title">
6277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
6278       </div>
6279       <div class="date">
6280         22nd January 2013
6281       </div>
6282       <div class="body">
6283         <p>Yesterday, I
6284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6285 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6286 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6288 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
6289 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6290 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6291 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6292 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
6293 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6294 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
6295 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
6296 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
6297
6298 <pre>
6299 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6300 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6301 </pre>
6302
6303 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
6304 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6305 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6306 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
6307
6308 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6309 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
6310 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6311 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6312 word.</p>
6313
6314 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6315 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6316 process.</p>
6317
6318 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6319 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
6320
6321       </div>
6322       <div class="tags">
6323
6324
6325         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>.
6326
6327
6328       </div>
6329     </div>
6330     <div class="padding"></div>
6331
6332     <div class="entry">
6333       <div class="title">
6334         <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>
6335       </div>
6336       <div class="date">
6337         21st January 2013
6338       </div>
6339       <div class="body">
6340         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6341 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6342 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
6343 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
6344 it, fetch the
6345 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6346 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
6347 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
6348 autostart script.</p>
6349
6350 <p>The design is simple:</p>
6351
6352 <ul>
6353
6354 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6355 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
6356
6357 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6358 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6359 initially did.</li>
6360
6361 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6362 the APT database, a database
6363 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6364 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
6365
6366 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6367 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6368 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6369 package or packages.</li>
6370
6371 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6372 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
6373
6374 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6375 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
6376
6377 </ul>
6378
6379 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
6380 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
6381 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6382 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
6383
6384 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6385 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6386 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6387 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6388 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6389
6390 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6391 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6392 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6393 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6394 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6395 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6396 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6397 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6398
6399 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6400 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6401 '<tt>svn checkout
6402 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6403 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6404 devscripts package.</p>
6405
6406 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6407 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6408 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6409 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6410 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6411
6412       </div>
6413       <div class="tags">
6414
6415
6416         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>.
6417
6418
6419       </div>
6420     </div>
6421     <div class="padding"></div>
6422
6423     <div class="entry">
6424       <div class="title">
6425         <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>
6426       </div>
6427       <div class="date">
6428         19th January 2013
6429       </div>
6430       <div class="body">
6431         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6432 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6433 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6434 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6435 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6436 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6437 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6438 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6439 not a durable solution.
6440
6441 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6442 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6443
6444 <ul>
6445
6446 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6447   than A4).</li>
6448 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6449 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6450 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6451 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6452 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6453 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6454 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6455 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6456 size).</li>
6457 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6458   X.org packages.</li>
6459 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6460   the time).
6461
6462 </ul>
6463
6464 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6465 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6466 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6467 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6468 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6469 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6470 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6471 still be useful.</p>
6472
6473 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6474 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6475 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6476 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6477 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6478 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6479
6480       </div>
6481       <div class="tags">
6482
6483
6484         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>.
6485
6486
6487       </div>
6488     </div>
6489     <div class="padding"></div>
6490
6491     <div class="entry">
6492       <div class="title">
6493         <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>
6494       </div>
6495       <div class="date">
6496         18th January 2013
6497       </div>
6498       <div class="body">
6499         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6500 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6501 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6502 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6503 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6504 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6505 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6506
6507 <pre>
6508 #!/usr/bin/python
6509 import sys
6510 import apt
6511 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6512     cache = apt.Cache()
6513     cache.open(None)
6514     thepkgs = []
6515     for pkg in cache:
6516         version = pkg.candidate
6517         if version is None:
6518             version = pkg.installed
6519         if version is None:
6520             continue
6521         record = version.record
6522         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6523             continue
6524         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6525         for t in mime_types:
6526             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6527             if t == mimetype:
6528                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6529     return thepkgs
6530 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6531 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6532     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6533 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6534 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6535     print "  %s" %pkg
6536 </pre>
6537
6538 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6539
6540 <pre>
6541 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6542 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6543   gecko-mediaplayer
6544 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6545 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6546   browser-plugin-gnash
6547 %
6548 </pre>
6549
6550 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6551 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6552 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6553 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6554
6555 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6556 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6557 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6558 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6559 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6560 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6561
6562       </div>
6563       <div class="tags">
6564
6565
6566         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>.
6567
6568
6569       </div>
6570     </div>
6571     <div class="padding"></div>
6572
6573     <div class="entry">
6574       <div class="title">
6575         <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>
6576       </div>
6577       <div class="date">
6578         16th January 2013
6579       </div>
6580       <div class="body">
6581         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6582 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6583 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6584 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6585 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6586 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6587 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6588 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6589
6590 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6591 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6592 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6593 can be found on the
6594 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6595 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6596 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6597 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6598 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6599
6600 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6601
6602 <pre>
6603   count MIME type
6604   ----- -----------------------
6605      32 text/plain
6606      30 audio/mpeg
6607      29 image/png
6608      28 image/jpeg
6609      27 application/ogg
6610      26 audio/x-mp3
6611      25 image/tiff
6612      25 image/gif
6613      22 image/bmp
6614      22 audio/x-wav
6615      20 audio/x-flac
6616      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6617      18 video/x-ms-asf
6618      18 audio/x-musepack
6619      18 audio/x-mpeg
6620      18 application/x-ogg
6621      17 video/mpeg
6622      17 audio/x-scpls
6623      17 audio/ogg
6624      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6625 </pre>
6626
6627 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
6628
6629 <pre>
6630   count MIME type
6631   ----- -----------------------
6632      33 text/plain
6633      32 image/png
6634      32 image/jpeg
6635      29 audio/mpeg
6636      27 image/gif
6637      26 image/tiff
6638      26 application/ogg
6639      25 audio/x-mp3
6640      22 image/bmp
6641      21 audio/x-wav
6642      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6643      19 audio/x-mpeg
6644      18 video/mpeg
6645      18 audio/x-scpls
6646      18 audio/x-flac
6647      18 application/x-ogg
6648      17 video/x-ms-asf
6649      17 text/html
6650      17 audio/x-musepack
6651      16 image/x-xbitmap
6652 </pre>
6653
6654 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
6655
6656 <pre>
6657   count MIME type
6658   ----- -----------------------
6659      31 text/plain
6660      31 image/png
6661      31 image/jpeg
6662      29 audio/mpeg
6663      28 application/ogg
6664      27 image/gif
6665      26 image/tiff
6666      26 audio/x-mp3
6667      23 audio/x-wav
6668      22 image/bmp
6669      21 audio/x-flac
6670      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6671      19 audio/x-mpeg
6672      18 video/x-ms-asf
6673      18 video/mpeg
6674      18 audio/x-scpls
6675      18 application/x-ogg
6676      17 audio/x-musepack
6677      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6678      16 video/x-msvideo
6679 </pre>
6680
6681 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6682 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6683 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6684 issues.</p>
6685
6686 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6687 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6688
6689       </div>
6690       <div class="tags">
6691
6692
6693         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>.
6694
6695
6696       </div>
6697     </div>
6698     <div class="padding"></div>
6699
6700     <div class="entry">
6701       <div class="title">
6702         <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>
6703       </div>
6704       <div class="date">
6705         15th January 2013
6706       </div>
6707       <div class="body">
6708         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6709 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6710 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6711 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6712 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6713 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6714 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6715 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6716 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6717 packages.</p>
6718
6719 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
6720 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
6721 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
6722 modalias.</p>
6723
6724 <p><blockquote>
6725 Package: package-name
6726 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6727 </blockquote></p>
6728
6729 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6730 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6731
6732 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6733 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6734
6735 <p><blockquote>
6736 Package: cheese
6737 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6738 </blockquote></p>
6739
6740 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6741 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6742
6743 <p><blockquote>
6744 Package: pcmciautils
6745 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6746 </blockquote></p>
6747
6748 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6749 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6750
6751 <p><blockquote>
6752 Package: colorhug-client
6753 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6754 </blockquote></p>
6755
6756 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6757 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6758 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6759
6760 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6761 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6762 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6763 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6764 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6765 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6766 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6767 Raring.</p>
6768
6769 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6770 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6771 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6772 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6773 try the
6774 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6775 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6776 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6777 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6778
6779 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6780 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6781
6782 <p><blockquote>
6783 % ./hw-support-lookup
6784 <br>yubikey-personalization
6785 <br>%
6786 </blockquote></p>
6787
6788 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6789 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6790
6791 <p><blockquote>
6792 % ./hw-support-lookup
6793 <br>pcmciautils
6794 <br>%
6795 </blockquote></p>
6796
6797 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6798 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6799 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6800
6801 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6802 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6803 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6804 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6805 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6806 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6807 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6808 see if it work.</p>
6809
6810 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6811 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6812 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6813 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6814
6815       </div>
6816       <div class="tags">
6817
6818
6819         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>.
6820
6821
6822       </div>
6823     </div>
6824     <div class="padding"></div>
6825
6826     <div class="entry">
6827       <div class="title">
6828         <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>
6829       </div>
6830       <div class="date">
6831         14th January 2013
6832       </div>
6833       <div class="body">
6834         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6835 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6836 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6837 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6838 in
6839 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6840 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6841
6842 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6843
6844 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6845 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6846 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6847 &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;,
6848 &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
6849 &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;.
6850
6851 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6852 this shell script:</p>
6853
6854 <pre>
6855 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6856 </pre>
6857
6858 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6859 using modinfo:</p>
6860
6861 <pre>
6862 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6863 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6864 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6865 %
6866 </pre>
6867
6868 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6869
6870 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6871 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6872
6873 <p><blockquote>
6874 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6875 </blockquote></p>
6876
6877 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6878
6879 <pre>
6880  v   00008086  (vendor)
6881  d   00002770  (device)
6882  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6883  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6884  bc  06        (bus class)
6885  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6886  i   00        (interface)
6887 </pre>
6888
6889 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6890 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6891 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6892 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6893
6894 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6895 means.</p>
6896
6897 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6898
6899 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6900 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6901
6902 <p><blockquote>
6903 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6904 </blockquote></p>
6905
6906 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6907
6908 <pre>
6909  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6910  p    0001  (device product)
6911  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6912  dc     09  (device class)
6913  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6914  dp     00  (device protocol)
6915  ic     09  (interface class)
6916  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6917  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6918 </pre>
6919
6920 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6921 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6922 these alias entries show up:</p>
6923
6924 <p><blockquote>
6925 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6926 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6927 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6928 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6929 </blockquote></p>
6930
6931 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6932 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6933 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6934
6935 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6936
6937 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6938 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6939
6940 <p><blockquote>
6941 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6942 </blockquote></p>
6943
6944 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6945
6946 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6947
6948 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6949 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6950 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6951
6952 <p><blockquote>
6953 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6954 </blockquote></p>
6955
6956 <p>The values present are</p>
6957
6958 <pre>
6959  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6960  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6961  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6962  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6963  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6964  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6965  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6966  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6967  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6968  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6969  ct   10             (chassis type)
6970  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6971 </pre>
6972
6973 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6974 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6975
6976 <pre>
6977   3 Desktop
6978   4 Low Profile Desktop
6979   5 Pizza Box
6980   6 Mini Tower
6981   7 Tower
6982   8 Portable
6983   9 Laptop
6984  10 Notebook
6985  11 Hand Held
6986  12 Docking Station
6987  13 All In One
6988  14 Sub Notebook
6989  15 Space-saving
6990  16 Lunch Box
6991  17 Main Server Chassis
6992  18 Expansion Chassis
6993  19 Sub Chassis
6994  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6995  21 Peripheral Chassis
6996  22 RAID Chassis
6997  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6998  24 Sealed-case PC
6999  25 Multi-system
7000  26 CompactPCI
7001  27 AdvancedTCA
7002  28 Blade
7003  29 Blade Enclosing
7004 </pre>
7005
7006 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7007 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7008 claim it is a desktop.</p>
7009
7010 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
7011
7012 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
7013 test machine:</p>
7014
7015 <p><blockquote>
7016 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7017 </blockquote></p>
7018
7019 <p>The values present are</p>
7020
7021 <pre>
7022   ty  01  (type)
7023   pr  00  (prototype)
7024   id  00  (id)
7025   ex  00  (extra)
7026 </pre>
7027
7028 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
7029 the valid values are.</p>
7030
7031 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
7032
7033 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7034 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7035 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7036 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7037 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
7038 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7039 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
7040
7041 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
7042
7043 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7044 one can use the following shell script:</p>
7045
7046 <pre>
7047   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
7048     echo "$id" ; \
7049     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
7050   done
7051 </pre>
7052
7053 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
7054 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
7055
7056 <pre>
7057   acpi:ACPI0003:
7058     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
7059   acpi:device:
7060   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
7061   acpi:IBM0068:
7062     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
7063     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
7064     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
7065     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
7066   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7067     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
7068     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
7069     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
7070   [...]
7071 </pre>
7072
7073 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7074 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7075 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7076 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7077
7078 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
7079 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
7080 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
7081
7082       </div>
7083       <div class="tags">
7084
7085
7086         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>.
7087
7088
7089       </div>
7090     </div>
7091     <div class="padding"></div>
7092
7093     <div class="entry">
7094       <div class="title">
7095         <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>
7096       </div>
7097       <div class="date">
7098         10th January 2013
7099       </div>
7100       <div class="body">
7101         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
7102 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
7103 Launcher and updated the Debian package
7104 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
7105 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
7106 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
7107 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
7108 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
7109 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
7110 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
7111 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7112 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
7113 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7114 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
7115 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7116 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
7117 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
7118 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
7119
7120       </div>
7121       <div class="tags">
7122
7123
7124         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>.
7125
7126
7127       </div>
7128     </div>
7129     <div class="padding"></div>
7130
7131     <div class="entry">
7132       <div class="title">
7133         <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>
7134       </div>
7135       <div class="date">
7136          9th January 2013
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="body">
7139         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7140 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7141 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7142 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7143 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7144 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7145 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7146 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7147 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7148 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
7149 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
7150
7151 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
7152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
7153 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
7154 simple:
7155
7156 <ul>
7157
7158 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7159   starting when a user log in.</li>
7160
7161 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7162   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
7163
7164 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7165   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7166   packages.</li>
7167
7168 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7169   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
7170
7171 </ul>
7172
7173 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7174 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7175 discover database to find packages and
7176 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
7177 packages.</p>
7178
7179 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7180 draft package is now checked into
7181 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7182 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
7183 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
7184 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7185 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7186 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
7187 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
7188 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7189 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
7190 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
7191 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
7192 because of the freeze).</p>
7193
7194 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7195 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7196 inserted):</p>
7197
7198 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
7199
7200 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7201 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
7202 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
7203
7204 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7205 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7206 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
7207 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7208 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7209 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7210 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
7211
7212 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7213 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
7214 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
7215 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7216 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
7217 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
7218 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7219 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
7220 not be installed?</p>
7221
7222 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7223 please send me an email. :)</p>
7224
7225       </div>
7226       <div class="tags">
7227
7228
7229         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>.
7230
7231
7232       </div>
7233     </div>
7234     <div class="padding"></div>
7235
7236     <div class="entry">
7237       <div class="title">
7238         <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>
7239       </div>
7240       <div class="date">
7241          2nd January 2013
7242       </div>
7243       <div class="body">
7244         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7245 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7246 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7247 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7248 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7249 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7250 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
7251 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7252 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7253 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
7254
7255 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
7256 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
7257 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
7258
7259       </div>
7260       <div class="tags">
7261
7262
7263         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>.
7264
7265
7266       </div>
7267     </div>
7268     <div class="padding"></div>
7269
7270     <div class="entry">
7271       <div class="title">
7272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7273       </div>
7274       <div class="date">
7275         28th December 2012
7276       </div>
7277       <div class="body">
7278         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
7279 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7280 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
7281 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
7282 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
7283 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
7284 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
7285 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
7286 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
7287 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
7288 followed by many others. :)</p>
7289
7290 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
7291 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
7292 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
7293 you want to donate to the project.</p>
7294
7295       </div>
7296       <div class="tags">
7297
7298
7299         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>.
7300
7301
7302       </div>
7303     </div>
7304     <div class="padding"></div>
7305
7306     <div class="entry">
7307       <div class="title">
7308         <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>
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="date">
7311         25th December 2012
7312       </div>
7313       <div class="body">
7314         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7315 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
7316
7317 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
7318 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7319 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7320 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7321 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
7322 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7323 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7324 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
7325 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7326 name.</p>
7327
7328 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7329 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7330 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
7331
7332 <blockquote><pre>
7333 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7334 cd bitcoin
7335 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7336 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7337 </pre></blockquote>
7338
7339 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7340 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7341 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7342 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7343 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7344 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7345 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7346 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7347 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
7348
7349 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7350 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7351 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7352
7353       </div>
7354       <div class="tags">
7355
7356
7357         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>.
7358
7359
7360       </div>
7361     </div>
7362     <div class="padding"></div>
7363
7364     <div class="entry">
7365       <div class="title">
7366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
7367       </div>
7368       <div class="date">
7369         21st December 2012
7370       </div>
7371       <div class="body">
7372         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7373 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
7374 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7375 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7376 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7377 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7378 is now maintained by a
7379 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7380 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7381 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7382 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7383 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7384 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7385 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7386 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7387 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7388 Corallo in a
7389 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7390 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7391 Debian package.</p>
7392
7393 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7394 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7395 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7396 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7397 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7398 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7399 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7400 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7401 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7402 new version to unstable.
7403
7404 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7405 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7406 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7407 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7408 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7409 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7410 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7411 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7412 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7413 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7414 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7415 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7416 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7417 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7418 have not tested them.</p>
7419
7420 <p>My
7421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7422 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7423 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7424 years ago, as can be
7425 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7426 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7427 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7428 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7429 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7430 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7431 the same address as last time,
7432 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7433
7434       </div>
7435       <div class="tags">
7436
7437
7438         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>.
7439
7440
7441       </div>
7442     </div>
7443     <div class="padding"></div>
7444
7445     <div class="entry">
7446       <div class="title">
7447         <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>
7448       </div>
7449       <div class="date">
7450         18th December 2012
7451       </div>
7452       <div class="body">
7453         <p>A few days ago I came across
7454 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
7455 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
7456 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
7457 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
7458 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
7459 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
7460 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
7461 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
7462 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
7463
7464 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
7465 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
7466 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
7467 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
7468
7469 <blockquote><pre>
7470 2004-05-27 Book Store
7471       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
7472       Liabilities:Visa
7473 </pre></blockquote>
7474
7475 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
7476 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
7477 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
7478 Spang</a>,
7479 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
7480 Keen</a>,
7481 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
7482 Cantino</a> and
7483 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
7484 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
7485 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
7486 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
7487 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
7488
7489 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
7490 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
7491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
7492 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
7493 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
7494
7495 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
7496 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
7497 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
7498 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
7499 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
7500 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
7501 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
7502 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
7503 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
7504
7505       </div>
7506       <div class="tags">
7507
7508
7509         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>.
7510
7511
7512       </div>
7513     </div>
7514     <div class="padding"></div>
7515
7516     <div class="entry">
7517       <div class="title">
7518         <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>
7519       </div>
7520       <div class="date">
7521          6th December 2012
7522       </div>
7523       <div class="body">
7524         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
7525 Oslo</a>, we use the
7526 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
7527 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
7528 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
7529 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
7530 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
7531 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
7532 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
7533 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
7534 Python.</p>
7535
7536 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
7537 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
7538 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
7539 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
7540 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
7541 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
7542
7543 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
7544 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
7545 user currently logged in:</p>
7546
7547 <blockquote><pre>
7548 #!/usr/bin/env python
7549 import getpass
7550 import xmlrpclib
7551 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
7552 username = getpass.getuser()
7553 password = getpass.getpass()
7554 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
7555 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
7556 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
7557 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
7558 result = server.logout(sessionid)
7559 print result
7560 </pre></blockquote>
7561
7562 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
7563 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
7564
7565       </div>
7566       <div class="tags">
7567
7568
7569         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>.
7570
7571
7572       </div>
7573     </div>
7574     <div class="padding"></div>
7575
7576     <div class="entry">
7577       <div class="title">
7578         <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>
7579       </div>
7580       <div class="date">
7581         17th November 2012
7582       </div>
7583       <div class="body">
7584         <p>While working on a
7585 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
7586 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
7587 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
7588 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
7589 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
7590 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
7591
7592 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
7593 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
7594 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
7595 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
7596 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
7597 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
7598 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
7599 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
7600 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
7601 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
7602 arguments.</p>
7603
7604 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
7605 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
7606 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
7607 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
7608 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
7609 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
7610 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
7611 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
7612
7613 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
7614 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
7615 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
7616 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
7617 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
7618 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
7619 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
7620 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
7621 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
7622 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
7623 correct right holder.</p>
7624
7625 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
7626 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
7627 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
7628 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
7629 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
7630 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
7631 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
7632 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
7633 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
7634 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
7635 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
7636 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
7637 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
7638 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
7639
7640 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
7641 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
7642 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
7643
7644 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
7645 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
7646
7647       </div>
7648       <div class="tags">
7649
7650
7651         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>.
7652
7653
7654       </div>
7655     </div>
7656     <div class="padding"></div>
7657
7658     <div class="entry">
7659       <div class="title">
7660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
7661       </div>
7662       <div class="date">
7663         14th November 2012
7664       </div>
7665       <div class="body">
7666         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
7667 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7668 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
7669 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
7670 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
7671 the people behind the German
7672 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
7673 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
7674 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
7675
7676 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7677
7678 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
7679 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
7680 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
7681
7682 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
7683 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
7684 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
7685 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
7686 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
7687 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
7688
7689 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
7690 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
7691 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
7692 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
7693 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
7694 relationship management and the communication processes in the
7695 project.</p>
7696
7697 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
7698 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
7699 and a yoga teacher.</p>
7700
7701 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7702 project?</strong></p>
7703
7704 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
7705
7706 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
7707 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
7708 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
7709 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
7710 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
7711 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
7712 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
7713 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
7714 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
7715 parents.</p>
7716
7717 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
7718 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
7719 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
7720 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
7721 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
7722 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
7723 Germany.</p>
7724
7725 <p>For information about our school project you can read
7726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
7727 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
7728
7729 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7730 Edu?</strong></p>
7731
7732 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
7733 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
7734
7735 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
7736 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
7737 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
7738 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
7739 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
7740 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
7741 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
7742 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
7743 teachers, parents...</p>
7744
7745 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7746 Edu?</strong></p>
7747
7748 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
7749 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7750
7751 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
7752 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
7753 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
7754 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
7755 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7756
7757 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
7758 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
7759 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
7760 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
7761 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
7762 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
7763 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
7764
7765 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7766
7767 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
7768 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
7769 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
7770 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
7771
7772 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7773 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7774
7775 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
7776 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
7777 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
7778 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
7779 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
7780
7781 <ul>
7782
7783 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
7784 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
7785 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
7786
7787 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
7788 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
7789 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
7790 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
7791 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
7792 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
7793 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
7794
7795 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
7796 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
7797 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
7798 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
7799
7800 </ul>
7801
7802       </div>
7803       <div class="tags">
7804
7805
7806         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>.
7807
7808
7809       </div>
7810     </div>
7811     <div class="padding"></div>
7812
7813     <div class="entry">
7814       <div class="title">
7815         <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>
7816       </div>
7817       <div class="date">
7818          4th November 2012
7819       </div>
7820       <div class="body">
7821         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
7822 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
7823 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
7824 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
7825 see how a member of the bitcoin community
7826 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
7827 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
7828 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
7829 competition.  My thoughts go to the
7830 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
7831 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
7832 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
7833 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
7834 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
7835
7836 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
7837 that the community already seem to have
7838 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
7839 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
7840 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
7841 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
7842 wealth is available.</p>
7843
7844       </div>
7845       <div class="tags">
7846
7847
7848         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>.
7849
7850
7851       </div>
7852     </div>
7853     <div class="padding"></div>
7854
7855     <div class="entry">
7856       <div class="title">
7857         <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>
7858       </div>
7859       <div class="date">
7860         26th October 2012
7861       </div>
7862       <div class="body">
7863         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
7864 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
7865 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
7866 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
7867 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
7868 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
7869 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
7870 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
7871 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
7872 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
7873 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
7874 it every time.</p>
7875
7876 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
7877 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
7878 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
7879 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
7880 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
7881 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
7882 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
7883 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
7884 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
7885 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
7886 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
7887 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
7888
7889 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
7890 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
7891 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
7892 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
7893 article: First the unplanned outage:
7894
7895 <blockquote><pre>
7896 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
7897 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
7898 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
7899 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
7900 Duration:    40 minutes
7901 Scope:       Exchange 2003
7902 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
7903              a cluster failover.
7904
7905 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
7906              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
7907 Technician:  [xxx]
7908 </pre></blockquote>
7909
7910 Next the planned outage:
7911
7912 <blockquote><pre>
7913 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
7914 Severity:    Major (Planned)
7915 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
7916 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
7917 Duration:    10 hours
7918 Scope:       H2 Transport
7919 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
7920              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
7921              4510s.
7922 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
7923              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
7924              connectivity.
7925 Technician:  [xxx]
7926 </pre></blockquote>
7927
7928 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
7929 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
7930 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
7931 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
7932 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
7933 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
7934 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
7935
7936 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
7937 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
7938 university too.  We do register
7939 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
7940 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
7941 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
7942 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
7943 for other sites to consider too?</p>
7944
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="tags">
7947
7948
7949         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>.
7950
7951
7952       </div>
7953     </div>
7954     <div class="padding"></div>
7955
7956     <div class="entry">
7957       <div class="title">
7958         <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>
7959       </div>
7960       <div class="date">
7961         22nd October 2012
7962       </div>
7963       <div class="body">
7964         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
7965 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
7966 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
7967 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
7968 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
7969 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
7970 background information is available in Norwegian from
7971 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
7972 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
7973 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
7974 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
7975 willing to
7976 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
7977 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
7978 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
7979 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
7980 sounded like
7981 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
7982 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
7983 later.</p>
7984
7985 <p>And thought this action is
7986 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
7987 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
7988 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
7989 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
7990 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
7991 rights.</p>
7992
7993 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
7994 unacceptable terms.  For example
7995 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
7996 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
7997 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
7998 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
7999 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
8000
8001 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
8002 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
8003 restored the account of the user, as reported by
8004 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
8005 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
8006 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
8007 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
8008 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
8009 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
8010 reading two opinions from
8011 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
8012 Phipps</a> and
8013 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
8014 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
8015 details about the original story.</p>
8016
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="tags">
8019
8020
8021         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>.
8022
8023
8024       </div>
8025     </div>
8026     <div class="padding"></div>
8027
8028     <div class="entry">
8029       <div class="title">
8030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
8031       </div>
8032       <div class="date">
8033         18th October 2012
8034       </div>
8035       <div class="body">
8036         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
8037 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
8038 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
8039 across a marvellous drawing by
8040 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
8041 visualising some of what is going on.
8042
8043 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
8044 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
8045
8046 <blockquote>
8047 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
8048 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
8049 </blockquote>
8050
8051 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
8052 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
8053 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
8054 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
8055 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
8056 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
8057
8058       </div>
8059       <div class="tags">
8060
8061
8062         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>.
8063
8064
8065       </div>
8066     </div>
8067     <div class="padding"></div>
8068
8069     <div class="entry">
8070       <div class="title">
8071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
8072       </div>
8073       <div class="date">
8074         12th October 2012
8075       </div>
8076       <div class="body">
8077         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
8078 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
8079 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
8080 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
8081 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
8082 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
8083 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
8084 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
8085 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
8086 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
8087 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
8088 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
8089 matter".</p>
8090
8091 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
8092 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
8093 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
8094 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
8095 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
8096 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
8097 to argue its side.</p>
8098
8099 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
8100 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
8101 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
8102 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
8103
8104 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
8105 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
8106 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
8107
8108       </div>
8109       <div class="tags">
8110
8111
8112         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>.
8113
8114
8115       </div>
8116     </div>
8117     <div class="padding"></div>
8118
8119     <div class="entry">
8120       <div class="title">
8121         <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>
8122       </div>
8123       <div class="date">
8124          3rd October 2012
8125       </div>
8126       <div class="body">
8127         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
8128 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
8129 the computer science book collection available in his local
8130 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
8131 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
8132 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
8133 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
8134 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
8135 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
8136 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
8137 recently published books.</p>
8138
8139 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
8140 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
8141 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
8142 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
8143 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
8144 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
8145 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
8146 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
8147 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
8148 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
8149 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
8150 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
8151 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
8152 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
8153 for the library that evening.</p>
8154
8155 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
8156 going to know that for example
8157 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
8158 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
8159 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
8160 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
8161 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
8162 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
8163 book right away.</p>
8164
8165       </div>
8166       <div class="tags">
8167
8168
8169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8170
8171
8172       </div>
8173     </div>
8174     <div class="padding"></div>
8175
8176     <div class="entry">
8177       <div class="title">
8178         <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>
8179       </div>
8180       <div class="date">
8181         23rd September 2012
8182       </div>
8183       <div class="body">
8184         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
8185 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
8186 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
8187 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
8188 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
8189 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
8190
8191 When I started, I
8192 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
8193 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
8194 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
8195 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
8196 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
8197 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
8198 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
8199
8200 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
8201
8202 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
8203 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
8204 the project files currently available from
8205 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8206
8207 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8208 the updated
8209 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8210 and
8211 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8212 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8213 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8214 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8215
8216       </div>
8217       <div class="tags">
8218
8219
8220         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>.
8221
8222
8223       </div>
8224     </div>
8225     <div class="padding"></div>
8226
8227     <div class="entry">
8228       <div class="title">
8229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
8230       </div>
8231       <div class="date">
8232         17th September 2012
8233       </div>
8234       <div class="body">
8235         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
8236 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8237 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
8238 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
8239 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
8240 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
8241 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
8242
8243 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8244
8245 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
8246 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
8247 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
8248 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
8249 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
8250 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
8251 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
8252 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
8253 training is anyway very important</p>
8254
8255 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
8256 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
8257 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
8258 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
8259 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
8260
8261 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8262 project?</strong></p>
8263
8264 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
8265 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
8266 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
8267 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
8268 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
8269 hole.</p>
8270
8271 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8272 Edu?</strong></p>
8273
8274 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
8275 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
8276 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
8277 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
8278 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
8279 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
8280 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
8281 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
8282 hassle.</p>
8283
8284 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8285 Edu?</strong></p>
8286
8287 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
8288 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
8289 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
8290 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
8291 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
8292 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
8293 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
8294 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
8295
8296 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8297
8298 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
8299 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
8300 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
8301 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
8302 has the same...</p>
8303
8304 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
8305 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
8306 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
8307 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
8308
8309 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8310 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8311
8312 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
8313 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
8314 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
8315
8316 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
8317 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
8318 don't.</p>
8319
8320 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
8321 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
8322 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
8323 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
8324 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
8325 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
8326 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
8327
8328       </div>
8329       <div class="tags">
8330
8331
8332         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>.
8333
8334
8335       </div>
8336     </div>
8337     <div class="padding"></div>
8338
8339     <div class="entry">
8340       <div class="title">
8341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
8342       </div>
8343       <div class="date">
8344         15th September 2012
8345       </div>
8346       <div class="body">
8347         <p>After the
8348 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
8349 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
8350 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
8351 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
8352 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
8353 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
8354 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
8355 was
8356 <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
8357 formal working group should be formed.</p>
8358
8359 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
8360 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
8361 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
8362 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
8363 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
8364 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
8365 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
8366 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
8367
8368 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
8369 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
8370 IETF.</p>
8371
8372       </div>
8373       <div class="tags">
8374
8375
8376         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>.
8377
8378
8379       </div>
8380     </div>
8381     <div class="padding"></div>
8382
8383     <div class="entry">
8384       <div class="title">
8385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
8386       </div>
8387       <div class="date">
8388         12th September 2012
8389       </div>
8390       <div class="body">
8391         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
8392 publication of of
8393 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
8394 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
8395 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
8396 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
8397 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
8398 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
8399 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
8400 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
8401 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
8402 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
8403
8404 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
8405 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
8406 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
8407 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
8408
8409 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
8410 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
8411
8412       </div>
8413       <div class="tags">
8414
8415
8416         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>.
8417
8418
8419       </div>
8420     </div>
8421     <div class="padding"></div>
8422
8423     <div class="entry">
8424       <div class="title">
8425         <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>
8426       </div>
8427       <div class="date">
8428          7th September 2012
8429       </div>
8430       <div class="body">
8431         <p>As I
8432 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8433 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8434 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8435 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8436 repository for the project</a>.</p>
8437
8438 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8439 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8440 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8441 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
8442
8443 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8444 PostScript formats at
8445 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8446 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
8447
8448       </div>
8449       <div class="tags">
8450
8451
8452         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>.
8453
8454
8455       </div>
8456     </div>
8457     <div class="padding"></div>
8458
8459     <div class="entry">
8460       <div class="title">
8461         <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>
8462       </div>
8463       <div class="date">
8464         23rd August 2012
8465       </div>
8466       <div class="body">
8467         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
8468 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
8469 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
8470 revisit the great site
8471 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
8472 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
8473 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
8474
8475       </div>
8476       <div class="tags">
8477
8478
8479         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>.
8480
8481
8482       </div>
8483     </div>
8484     <div class="padding"></div>
8485
8486     <div class="entry">
8487       <div class="title">
8488         <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>
8489       </div>
8490       <div class="date">
8491         17th August 2012
8492       </div>
8493       <div class="body">
8494         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
8495 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
8496 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
8497 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
8498 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
8499 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
8500 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
8501 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
8502 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
8503 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
8504 summer I
8505 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
8506 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
8507 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
8508
8509 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
8510 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
8511 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
8512 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
8513 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
8514 progress:</p>
8515
8516 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
8517
8518 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
8519 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
8520 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
8521 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
8522 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
8523 english version of the docbook source.</p>
8524
8525 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
8526 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
8527 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
8528 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
8529 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
8530 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
8531 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
8532 project files currently available from <a
8533 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8534
8535 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8536 the updated
8537 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8538 and
8539 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8540 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8541 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8542 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8543
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="tags">
8546
8547
8548         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>.
8549
8550
8551       </div>
8552     </div>
8553     <div class="padding"></div>
8554
8555     <div class="entry">
8556       <div class="title">
8557         <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>
8558       </div>
8559       <div class="date">
8560         10th August 2012
8561       </div>
8562       <div class="body">
8563         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
8564 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
8565 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
8566 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
8567 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
8568 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
8569 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
8570 case for the language
8571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
8572 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
8573
8574 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
8575 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
8576 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
8577 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
8578 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
8579
8580 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
8581 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
8582 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
8583 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
8584 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
8585 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
8586 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
8587 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
8588 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
8589 alias for 'nb'.</p>
8590
8591 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
8592 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
8593 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
8594 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
8595 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
8596 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
8597 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
8598 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
8599 at the same time. :(</p>
8600
8601 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
8602 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
8603 processors. :(</p>
8604
8605 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
8606
8607       </div>
8608       <div class="tags">
8609
8610
8611         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>.
8612
8613
8614       </div>
8615     </div>
8616     <div class="padding"></div>
8617
8618     <div class="entry">
8619       <div class="title">
8620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
8621       </div>
8622       <div class="date">
8623         31st July 2012
8624       </div>
8625       <div class="body">
8626         <p>I tried to send this text to the
8627 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
8628 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
8629 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
8630 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
8631 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
8632 out.</p>
8633
8634 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
8635 learning curve at the moment.</p>
8636
8637 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
8638 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
8639 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
8640 available from
8641 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
8642 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
8643 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
8644 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
8645 Squeeze.</p>
8646
8647 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
8648 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
8649 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
8650 problems.</p>
8651
8652 <ul>
8653
8654 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
8655    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
8656    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
8657    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
8658    index references spanning several pages (See
8659    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
8660    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
8661    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
8662
8663 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
8664    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
8665    #683163</a>).</li>
8666
8667 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
8668    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
8669    footnote and text body, see
8670    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
8671    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
8672    refs listed are not right).</li>
8673
8674 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
8675
8676 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
8677    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
8678
8679 </ul>
8680
8681 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
8682 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
8683 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
8684
8685 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
8686
8687       </div>
8688       <div class="tags">
8689
8690
8691         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>.
8692
8693
8694       </div>
8695     </div>
8696     <div class="padding"></div>
8697
8698     <div class="entry">
8699       <div class="title">
8700         <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>
8701       </div>
8702       <div class="date">
8703         21st July 2012
8704       </div>
8705       <div class="body">
8706         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
8707 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
8708 norwegian version</a> of the book
8709 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
8710 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
8711 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
8712 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
8713 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8714
8715 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
8716 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
8717 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
8718 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
8719 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
8720 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
8721 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
8722 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
8723 print. :)</p>
8724
8725 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
8726 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
8727 language.</p>
8728
8729       </div>
8730       <div class="tags">
8731
8732
8733         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>.
8734
8735
8736       </div>
8737     </div>
8738     <div class="padding"></div>
8739
8740     <div class="entry">
8741       <div class="title">
8742         <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>
8743       </div>
8744       <div class="date">
8745         16th July 2012
8746       </div>
8747       <div class="body">
8748         <p>I am currently working on a
8749 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
8750 to translate</a> the book
8751 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
8752 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
8753 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
8754 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
8755 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
8756 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
8757 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8758
8759 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
8760 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
8761 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
8762 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
8763 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
8764 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
8765 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
8766 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
8767 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
8768
8769       </div>
8770       <div class="tags">
8771
8772
8773         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>.
8774
8775
8776       </div>
8777     </div>
8778     <div class="padding"></div>
8779
8780     <div class="entry">
8781       <div class="title">
8782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
8783       </div>
8784       <div class="date">
8785          9th July 2012
8786       </div>
8787       <div class="body">
8788         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8789 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
8790 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
8791 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
8792 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
8793 to adjust and scale the just released
8794 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
8795 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
8796 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
8797
8798 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8799
8800 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
8801 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
8802 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
8803 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
8804 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
8805 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
8806 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
8807 perspective when working with IT.</p>
8808
8809 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8810 project?</strong></p>
8811
8812 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
8813 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
8814 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
8815 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
8816 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
8817 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
8818
8819 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8820 Edu?</strong></p>
8821
8822 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
8823 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
8824 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
8825 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
8826 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
8827 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
8828 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
8829 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
8830 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
8831 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
8832 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
8833 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
8834 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
8835 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
8836 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
8837 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
8838 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
8839 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
8840 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
8841 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
8842 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
8843 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
8844 quicker to update.
8845
8846 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8847 Edu?</strong></p>
8848
8849 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
8850 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
8851 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
8852 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
8853 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
8854 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
8855
8856 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
8857 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
8858 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
8859 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
8860 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
8861 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
8862 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
8863 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
8864 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
8865 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
8866 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
8867 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
8868 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
8869 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
8870 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
8871
8872 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
8873 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
8874 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
8875 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
8876 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
8877 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
8878 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
8879 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
8880
8881 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
8882 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
8883 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
8884 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
8885 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
8886 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
8887 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
8888 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
8889 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
8890 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
8891 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
8892 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
8893 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
8894 sound file.</p>
8895
8896 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
8897 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
8898 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
8899 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
8900 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
8901 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
8902 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
8903 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
8904 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
8905
8906 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8907
8908 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
8909 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
8910 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
8911 )</p>
8912
8913 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8914 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8915
8916 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
8917 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
8918 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
8919 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
8920 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
8921 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
8922 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
8923 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
8924 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
8925 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
8926 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
8927 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
8928 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
8929 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
8930 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
8931
8932 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
8933 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
8934 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
8935 management with Airtime</a>,
8936 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
8937 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
8938 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
8939 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
8940 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
8941
8942       </div>
8943       <div class="tags">
8944
8945
8946         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>.
8947
8948
8949       </div>
8950     </div>
8951     <div class="padding"></div>
8952
8953     <div class="entry">
8954       <div class="title">
8955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
8956       </div>
8957       <div class="date">
8958          8th July 2012
8959       </div>
8960       <div class="body">
8961         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
8962 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
8963 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
8964 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
8965 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
8966 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
8967 Steinberg in his blog post
8968 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
8969 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
8970 spending of your tax money.</p>
8971
8972 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
8973 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
8974 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
8975 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
8976 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
8977 purchases.</p>
8978
8979       </div>
8980       <div class="tags">
8981
8982
8983         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>.
8984
8985
8986       </div>
8987     </div>
8988     <div class="padding"></div>
8989
8990     <div class="entry">
8991       <div class="title">
8992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
8993       </div>
8994       <div class="date">
8995          7th July 2012
8996       </div>
8997       <div class="body">
8998         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8999 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
9000 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
9001 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
9002 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
9003 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
9004 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
9005 receive.  The software is
9006
9007 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
9008 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
9009 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
9010 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
9011 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
9012 Windows</a>.</p>
9013
9014 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
9015 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
9016
9017 <p><ul>
9018
9019   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
9020     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
9021
9022   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
9023     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
9024     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
9025     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
9026     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
9027     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
9028     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
9029     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
9030     </li>
9031
9032   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
9033     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
9034
9035   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
9036     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
9037
9038   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
9039     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
9040
9041   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
9042
9043   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
9044     formats </li>
9045
9046   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
9047     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
9048     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
9049     (as separate sets)</li>
9050
9051   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
9052     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
9053     percentage)</li>
9054
9055   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
9056     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
9057     memory):
9058     <ul>
9059       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
9060       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
9061       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
9062       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
9063       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
9064       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
9065       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
9066       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
9067       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
9068       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
9069           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
9070           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
9071           activity)</li>
9072       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
9073       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
9074     </ul></li>
9075
9076   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
9077     <ul>
9078       <li>Break periods</li>
9079       <li>For teacher(s):
9080         <ul>
9081           <li>Not available periods</li>
9082           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
9083           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
9084           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
9085           <li>Min hours daily</li>
9086           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
9087
9088           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9089             days per week</li>
9090         </ul></li>
9091       <li>For students (sets):
9092         <ul>
9093           <li>Not available periods</li>
9094           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
9095           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
9096           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
9097           <li>Min hours daily</li>
9098           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
9099
9100           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9101             days per week</li>
9102         </ul></li>
9103       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
9104         <ul>
9105           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
9106           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
9107           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
9108           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
9109           <li>End(s) students day</li>
9110           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
9111           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
9112             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
9113           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
9114           <li>Not overlapping</li>
9115           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
9116           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
9117         </ul></li>
9118     </ul></li>
9119
9120   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
9121     <ul>
9122       <li>Room not available periods</li>
9123       <li>For teacher(s):
9124         <ul>
9125           <li>Home room(s)</li>
9126           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
9127           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
9128         </ul>
9129       </li>
9130
9131       <li>For students (sets):
9132         <ul>
9133           <li>Home room(s)</li>
9134           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
9135           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
9136         </ul>
9137       </li>
9138       <li>Preferred room(s):
9139         <ul>
9140           <li>For a subject</li>
9141           <li>For an activity tag</li>
9142           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
9143           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
9144         </ul>
9145       </li>
9146
9147       <li>For a set of activities:
9148         <ul>
9149           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
9150         </ul>
9151       </li>
9152     </ul>
9153   </li>
9154 </ul></p>
9155
9156 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
9157 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
9158 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
9159 manually, check it out.
9160
9161 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
9162 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
9163 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
9164 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
9165 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
9166 section</a>.</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/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
9182       </div>
9183       <div class="date">
9184          3rd July 2012
9185       </div>
9186       <div class="body">
9187         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
9188 project (Norwegian version of
9189 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
9190 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
9191 a problem with the municipalities using
9192 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
9193 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
9194 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
9195 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
9196 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
9197 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
9198 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
9199 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
9200 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
9201 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
9202 the From: header.</p>
9203
9204 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
9205 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
9206 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
9207 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
9208 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
9209 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
9210 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
9211 behaviour.</p>
9212
9213 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
9214 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
9215 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
9216 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
9217 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
9218 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
9219 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
9220
9221       </div>
9222       <div class="tags">
9223
9224
9225         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>.
9226
9227
9228       </div>
9229     </div>
9230     <div class="padding"></div>
9231
9232     <div class="entry">
9233       <div class="title">
9234         <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>
9235       </div>
9236       <div class="date">
9237         26th June 2012
9238       </div>
9239       <div class="body">
9240         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
9241 another interview with the people behind
9242 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
9243 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
9244 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
9245 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
9246 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
9247 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9248 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9249
9250 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9251
9252 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
9253 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
9254 ICT in schools</p>
9255
9256 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9257 project?</strong></p>
9258
9259 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
9260 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
9261 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
9262 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
9263
9264 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9265 Edu?</strong></p>
9266
9267 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
9268 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
9269 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
9270 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
9271
9272 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9273 Edu?</strong></p>
9274
9275 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
9276 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
9277 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
9278 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
9279 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
9280 technologies in school.</p>
9281
9282 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9283
9284 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
9285 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
9286 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
9287
9288 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9289 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9290
9291 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
9292 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
9293 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
9294 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
9295
9296 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
9297 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
9298 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
9299
9300 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
9301 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
9302 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
9303 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
9304 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
9305 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
9306 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
9307 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
9308 working there.</p>
9309
9310       </div>
9311       <div class="tags">
9312
9313
9314         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>.
9315
9316
9317       </div>
9318     </div>
9319     <div class="padding"></div>
9320
9321     <div class="entry">
9322       <div class="title">
9323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
9324       </div>
9325       <div class="date">
9326         24th June 2012
9327       </div>
9328       <div class="body">
9329         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
9330 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
9331 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
9332 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
9333 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
9334 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
9335 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
9336 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
9337 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
9338 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
9339 missing in my book.</p>
9340
9341 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
9342 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
9343 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
9344 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
9345 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
9346 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
9347 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
9348
9349       </div>
9350       <div class="tags">
9351
9352
9353         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>.
9354
9355
9356       </div>
9357     </div>
9358     <div class="padding"></div>
9359
9360     <div class="entry">
9361       <div class="title">
9362         <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>
9363       </div>
9364       <div class="date">
9365         11th June 2012
9366       </div>
9367       <div class="body">
9368         <p>During my work on
9369 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
9370 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
9371 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
9372 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
9373 explanation.</p>
9374
9375 <p><ul>
9376
9377 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
9378 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
9379 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
9380 system depend on tasksel tasks in
9381 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
9382 installation.</li>
9383
9384 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
9385 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
9386 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
9387 at least try to enable it for these services:
9388 <ul>
9389
9390   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
9391     quotas.</li>
9392   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
9393   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
9394   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
9395   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
9396   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
9397
9398 </ul></li>
9399
9400 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
9401 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
9402 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
9403 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
9404
9405 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
9406 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
9407 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
9408
9409 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
9410 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
9411 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
9412 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
9413 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
9414 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
9415
9416 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
9417 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
9418 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
9419 in Wheezy.
9420
9421 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
9422 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
9423 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
9424
9425 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
9426 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
9427 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
9428 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
9429
9430 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
9431 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
9432 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
9433 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
9434
9435 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
9436 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
9437 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
9438
9439 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
9440 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
9441 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
9442
9443 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
9444 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
9445 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
9446 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
9447 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
9448
9449 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
9450 <ul>
9451
9452 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
9453 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
9454 <li>and probably more?</li>
9455 </ul></li>
9456
9457 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
9458 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
9459 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
9460 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
9461 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
9462 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
9463 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
9464 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
9465
9466
9467 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
9468 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
9469 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
9470 use.</li>
9471
9472 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
9473 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
9474 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
9475 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
9476 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
9477
9478 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
9479 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
9480 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
9481 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
9482 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
9483 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
9484
9485 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
9486 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
9487 There are at least three implementations,
9488 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
9489 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
9490 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
9491 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
9492 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
9493 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
9494 given room.</li>
9495
9496 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
9497 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
9498 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
9499 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
9500 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
9501 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
9502 investigated.</li>
9503
9504 </ul></p>
9505
9506 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
9507 version.</p>
9508
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="tags">
9511
9512
9513         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>.
9514
9515
9516       </div>
9517     </div>
9518     <div class="padding"></div>
9519
9520     <div class="entry">
9521       <div class="title">
9522         <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>
9523       </div>
9524       <div class="date">
9525          9th June 2012
9526       </div>
9527       <div class="body">
9528         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
9529 <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
9530 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
9531 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
9532 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
9533 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
9534 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
9535 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
9536 be willing to pay for.</p>
9537
9538 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
9539 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
9540 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
9541 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
9542 Orwell</a>.</p>
9543
9544       </div>
9545       <div class="tags">
9546
9547
9548         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>.
9549
9550
9551       </div>
9552     </div>
9553     <div class="padding"></div>
9554
9555     <div class="entry">
9556       <div class="title">
9557         <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>
9558       </div>
9559       <div class="date">
9560          6th June 2012
9561       </div>
9562       <div class="body">
9563         <p>A few days ago
9564 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
9565 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
9566 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
9567 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
9568 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
9569 code for HP, Dell and IBM
9570 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
9571 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
9572 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
9573 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
9574 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
9575
9576 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
9577 output:
9578
9579 <blockquote><pre>
9580 % 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>
9581 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": ""})
9582 %
9583 </pre></blockquote>
9584
9585 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
9586 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
9587 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
9588
9589       </div>
9590       <div class="tags">
9591
9592
9593         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>.
9594
9595
9596       </div>
9597     </div>
9598     <div class="padding"></div>
9599
9600     <div class="entry">
9601       <div class="title">
9602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
9603       </div>
9604       <div class="date">
9605          2nd June 2012
9606       </div>
9607       <div class="body">
9608         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
9609 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9610 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
9611 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
9612 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9613 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
9614
9615 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9616
9617 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
9618 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
9619 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
9620 by Angela).</p>
9621
9622 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
9623 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
9624 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
9625 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
9626 becoming an osteopath.</p>
9627
9628 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
9629 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
9630 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
9631 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
9632 skills with communication skills.</p>
9633
9634 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9635 project?</strong></p>
9636
9637 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
9638 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
9639 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
9640 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
9641 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
9642
9643 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
9644 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
9645 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
9646 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
9647 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
9648 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
9649 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
9650 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
9651 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
9652
9653 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
9654 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
9655 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
9656
9657 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
9658
9659 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
9660 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
9661 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
9662 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
9663 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
9664 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
9665 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
9666 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
9667 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
9668 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
9669 point.</p>
9670
9671 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
9672 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
9673 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
9674 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
9675 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
9676 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
9677
9678 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
9679 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
9680 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
9681 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
9682 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
9683 spare time.</p>
9684
9685 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
9686 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
9687 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
9688 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
9689 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
9690
9691 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
9692 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
9693 avoidance do exist.</p>
9694
9695 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
9696 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
9697 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
9698 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
9699 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
9700 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
9701 and probably a gain for all.</p>
9702
9703 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9704 Edu?</strong></p>
9705
9706 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
9707 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
9708 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
9709 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
9710 project communication, honest communication within the group of
9711 developers, etc.</p>
9712
9713 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9714 Edu?</strong></p>
9715
9716 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
9717
9718 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
9719 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
9720 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
9721 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
9722 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
9723 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
9724 contribute).</p>
9725
9726 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
9727 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
9728 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
9729 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
9730 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
9731 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
9732 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
9733 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
9734 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
9735 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
9736
9737 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9738
9739 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
9740
9741 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
9742 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
9743 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
9744
9745 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
9746 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
9747 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
9748 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
9749
9750 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
9751 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
9752 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
9753 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
9754 whiteboard.</p>
9755
9756 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
9757
9758 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9759 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9760
9761 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
9762 enrol people.</p>
9763
9764       </div>
9765       <div class="tags">
9766
9767
9768         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>.
9769
9770
9771       </div>
9772     </div>
9773     <div class="padding"></div>
9774
9775     <div class="entry">
9776       <div class="title">
9777         <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>
9778       </div>
9779       <div class="date">
9780          1st June 2012
9781       </div>
9782       <div class="body">
9783         <p>A few years ago I wrote
9784 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
9785 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
9786 I have learned from colleges here at the
9787 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
9788 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
9789 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
9790 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
9791 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
9792
9793 <p><pre>
9794 use strict;
9795 use warnings;
9796 use SOAP::Lite;
9797 use Data::Dumper;
9798 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
9799 my $App = 'test';
9800 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
9801 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
9802 my $s = SOAP::Lite
9803     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
9804     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
9805     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
9806     ;
9807 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
9808     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
9809     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
9810     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
9811 );
9812 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
9813 </pre></p>
9814
9815 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
9816
9817 <p><pre>
9818 $VAR1 = {
9819           'Asset' => {
9820                      'Entitlements' => {
9821                                        'EntitlementData' => [
9822                                                             {
9823                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9824                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9825                                                               'Provider' => '',
9826                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9827                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9828                                                             },
9829                                                             {
9830                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9831                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
9832                                                               'Provider' => '',
9833                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9834                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9835                                                             },
9836                                                             {
9837                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
9838                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
9839                                                               'Provider' => '',
9840                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
9841                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
9842                                                             }
9843                                                           ]
9844                                      },
9845                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
9846                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
9847                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
9848                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
9849                                           'Buid' => '2323',
9850                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
9851                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
9852                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
9853                                         }
9854                    }
9855         };
9856 </pre></p>
9857
9858 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
9859 service outside the
9860 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
9861 documentation</a>, and according to
9862 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
9863 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
9864 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
9865
9866 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
9867 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
9868
9869       </div>
9870       <div class="tags">
9871
9872
9873         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>.
9874
9875
9876       </div>
9877     </div>
9878     <div class="padding"></div>
9879
9880     <div class="entry">
9881       <div class="title">
9882         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
9883       </div>
9884       <div class="date">
9885         31st May 2012
9886       </div>
9887       <div class="body">
9888         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
9889 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
9890 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
9891 running Debian Squeeze, where
9892 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
9893 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
9894 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
9895 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
9896 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
9897 another day.</p>
9898
9899 <p>After calibration, I get a
9900 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
9901 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
9902 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
9903 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
9904 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
9905 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
9906 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
9907 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
9908 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
9909 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
9910 and a simple</p>
9911
9912 <p><pre>
9913 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
9914 </pre></p>
9915
9916 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
9917 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
9918 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
9919 enough for now.</p>
9920
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="tags">
9923
9924
9925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9926
9927
9928       </div>
9929     </div>
9930     <div class="padding"></div>
9931
9932     <div class="entry">
9933       <div class="title">
9934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="date">
9937         27th May 2012
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="body">
9940         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
9941 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9942 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
9943 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
9944 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
9945 since then, helping to make sure the
9946 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9947 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
9948
9949 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9950
9951 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
9952 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
9953 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
9954 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
9955 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
9956 our computer network.</p>
9957
9958 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
9959 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
9960 (4 months).</p>
9961
9962 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9963 project?</strong></p>
9964
9965 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
9966 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
9967 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
9968 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
9969 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
9970 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
9971 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
9972 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
9973 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
9974 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
9975 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
9976 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
9977 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
9978 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
9979
9980 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9981 Edu?</strong></p>
9982
9983 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
9984 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
9985 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
9986 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
9987 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
9988 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
9989 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
9990 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
9991
9992 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9993 Edu?</strong></p>
9994
9995 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
9996 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
9997 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
9998 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
9999 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
10000 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
10001 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
10002 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
10003 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
10004 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
10005 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
10006 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
10007
10008 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10009
10010 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
10011 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
10012 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
10013
10014 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10015 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10016
10017 <p><ol>
10018
10019 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
10020 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
10021 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
10022 developing.</li>
10023
10024 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
10025 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
10026 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
10027 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
10028 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
10029
10030 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
10031 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
10032 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
10033
10034 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
10035 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
10036 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
10037 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
10038
10039 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
10040 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
10041 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
10042
10043 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
10044
10045 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
10046 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
10047 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
10048 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
10049
10050 </ol></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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</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/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
10066       </div>
10067       <div class="date">
10068         26th May 2012
10069       </div>
10070       <div class="body">
10071         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
10072 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
10073 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
10074 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
10075 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
10076
10077 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
10078 <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>
10079 comment:</p>
10080
10081 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
10082 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
10083 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
10084 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
10085 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
10086 </blockquote></p>
10087
10088 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
10089 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
10090 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
10091 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
10092 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
10093 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
10094 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
10095 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
10096 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
10097 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
10098 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
10099 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
10100 of wasted effort.</p>
10101
10102 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
10103 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
10104 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
10105
10106 <p>See
10107 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
10108 and
10109 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
10110 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
10111 </blockquote></p>
10112
10113       </div>
10114       <div class="tags">
10115
10116
10117         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>.
10118
10119
10120       </div>
10121     </div>
10122     <div class="padding"></div>
10123
10124     <div class="entry">
10125       <div class="title">
10126         <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>
10127       </div>
10128       <div class="date">
10129         18th May 2012
10130       </div>
10131       <div class="body">
10132         <p>In january, I
10133 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
10134 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
10135 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
10136 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
10137 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
10138 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
10139 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
10140 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
10141 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
10142 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
10143
10144 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
10145 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
10146 drivers. :)</p>
10147
10148       </div>
10149       <div class="tags">
10150
10151
10152         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10153
10154
10155       </div>
10156     </div>
10157     <div class="padding"></div>
10158
10159     <div class="entry">
10160       <div class="title">
10161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
10162       </div>
10163       <div class="date">
10164         13th May 2012
10165       </div>
10166       <div class="body">
10167         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
10168 publish another interview with the people behind
10169 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
10170 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
10171 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
10172 details get right before release.
10173
10174 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10175
10176 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
10177 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
10178 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
10179 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
10180 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
10181 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
10182 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
10183 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
10184
10185 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
10186 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
10187 home since 2006.</p>
10188
10189 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10190 project?</strong></p>
10191
10192 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
10193 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
10194 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
10195 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
10196 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
10197 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
10198
10199 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
10200 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
10201 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
10202 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
10203 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
10204 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
10205 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
10206 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
10207 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
10208 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
10209 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
10210 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
10211 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
10212 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
10213 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
10214 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
10215
10216 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10217 Edu?</strong></p>
10218
10219 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
10220 for me as today.</p>
10221
10222 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
10223
10224 <p><ul>
10225
10226 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
10227 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
10228
10229 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
10230 cost.</li>
10231
10232 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
10233 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
10234 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
10235 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
10236 server</li>
10237
10238 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
10239 school.</li>
10240
10241 </ul></p>
10242
10243 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
10244 came up in this way:</p>
10245
10246 <p><ul>
10247
10248 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
10249 now.</li>
10250
10251 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
10252 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
10253 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
10254
10255 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
10256 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
10257 interfaces used in the past.</li>
10258
10259 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
10260 different needs.</li>
10261
10262 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
10263
10264 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
10265 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
10266 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
10267
10268 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
10269 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
10270
10271 </ul></p>
10272
10273 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10274 Edu?</strong></p>
10275
10276 <p><ul>
10277
10278 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
10279 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
10280 whole municipality areas.</li>
10281
10282 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
10283 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
10284 politicians.</li>
10285
10286 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
10287
10288 </ul></p>
10289
10290 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10291
10292 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
10293 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
10294 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
10295 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
10296 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
10297 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
10298
10299 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
10300 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
10301 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
10302 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
10303 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
10304
10305 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10306 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10307
10308 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
10309 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
10310 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
10311
10312       </div>
10313       <div class="tags">
10314
10315
10316         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>.
10317
10318
10319       </div>
10320     </div>
10321     <div class="padding"></div>
10322
10323     <div class="entry">
10324       <div class="title">
10325         <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>
10326       </div>
10327       <div class="date">
10328         30th April 2012
10329       </div>
10330       <div class="body">
10331         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
10332 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
10333
10334 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
10335 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
10336 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
10337 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
10338 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
10339 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
10340 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
10341 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
10342 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
10343 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
10344 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
10345 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
10346 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
10347 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
10348 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
10349 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
10350
10351 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
10352 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
10353 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
10354 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
10355 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
10356 finally found a Danish supplier
10357 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
10358 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
10359 days ago.</p>
10360
10361 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
10362 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
10363 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
10364 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
10365 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
10366 toys.</p>
10367
10368       </div>
10369       <div class="tags">
10370
10371
10372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10373
10374
10375       </div>
10376     </div>
10377     <div class="padding"></div>
10378
10379     <div class="entry">
10380       <div class="title">
10381         <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>
10382       </div>
10383       <div class="date">
10384         26th April 2012
10385       </div>
10386       <div class="body">
10387         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
10388 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
10389 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
10390 that the video editor application included with
10391 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
10392 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
10393 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
10394
10395 <p><blockquote>
10396 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
10397 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
10398 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
10399 </blockquote></p>
10400
10401 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
10402
10403 <p><blockquote>
10404 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
10405 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
10406 </blockquote></p>
10407
10408 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
10409 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
10410 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
10411 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
10412 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
10413 video.  AMR is
10414 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
10415 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
10416 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
10417 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
10418 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
10419 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
10420 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
10421
10422 <p>I know why I prefer
10423 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
10424 standards</a> also for video.</p>
10425
10426       </div>
10427       <div class="tags">
10428
10429
10430         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>.
10431
10432
10433       </div>
10434     </div>
10435     <div class="padding"></div>
10436
10437     <div class="entry">
10438       <div class="title">
10439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
10440       </div>
10441       <div class="date">
10442         19th April 2012
10443       </div>
10444       <div class="body">
10445         <p>Here in Norway, the
10446 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
10447 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
10448 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
10449 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
10450 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
10451 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
10452 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
10453 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
10454 on the same level.</p>
10455
10456 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
10457 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
10458 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
10459 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
10460 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
10461 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
10462 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
10463 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
10464 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
10465 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
10466 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
10467 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
10468 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
10469 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
10470 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
10471 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
10472 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
10473 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
10474
10475 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
10476 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
10477 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
10478 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
10479 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
10480 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
10481 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
10482 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
10483
10484 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
10485 from Simon Phipps
10486 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
10487 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
10488
10489 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
10490 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
10491 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
10492 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
10493 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
10494 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
10495 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
10496 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
10497 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
10498
10499       </div>
10500       <div class="tags">
10501
10502
10503         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>.
10504
10505
10506       </div>
10507     </div>
10508     <div class="padding"></div>
10509
10510     <div class="entry">
10511       <div class="title">
10512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
10513       </div>
10514       <div class="date">
10515         15th April 2012
10516       </div>
10517       <div class="body">
10518         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
10519 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
10520 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
10521 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
10522 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
10523 up in the recently released
10524 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
10525 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10526
10527 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10528
10529 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
10530 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
10531 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
10532 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
10533 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
10534 information technology and science/technology.</p>
10535
10536 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10537 project?</strong></p>
10538
10539 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
10540 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
10541 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
10542 contributing.</p>
10543
10544 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10545 Edu?</strong></p>
10546
10547 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
10548 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
10549 Debian Project!</p>
10550
10551 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10552 Edu?</strong></p>
10553
10554 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
10555 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
10556 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
10557 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
10558 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
10559 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
10560 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
10561
10562 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
10563 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
10564
10565 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10566
10567 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
10568 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
10569 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
10570 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
10571
10572 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10573 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10574
10575 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
10576 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
10577 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
10578 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
10579 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
10580 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
10581 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
10582
10583 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
10584 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
10585 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
10586 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
10587 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
10588 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
10589 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
10590 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
10591
10592       </div>
10593       <div class="tags">
10594
10595
10596         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>.
10597
10598
10599       </div>
10600     </div>
10601     <div class="padding"></div>
10602
10603     <div class="entry">
10604       <div class="title">
10605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
10606       </div>
10607       <div class="date">
10608          8th April 2012
10609       </div>
10610       <div class="body">
10611         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
10612 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
10613 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
10614 contributor to the
10615 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
10616 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
10617
10618 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10619
10620 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
10621 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
10622
10623 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10624 project?</strong></p>
10625
10626 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
10627 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
10628 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
10629 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
10630 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
10631 "localisation".</p>
10632
10633 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10634 Edu?</strong></p>
10635
10636 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10637 Edu?</strong></p>
10638
10639 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
10640 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
10641 education system.</p>
10642
10643 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
10644 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
10645 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
10646 money on the latest hardware.</p>
10647
10648 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10649
10650 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
10651 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
10652 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
10653
10654 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10655 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10656
10657 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
10658 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
10659 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
10660
10661       </div>
10662       <div class="tags">
10663
10664
10665         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>.
10666
10667
10668       </div>
10669     </div>
10670     <div class="padding"></div>
10671
10672     <div class="entry">
10673       <div class="title">
10674         <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>
10675       </div>
10676       <div class="date">
10677          6th April 2012
10678       </div>
10679       <div class="body">
10680         <p>Recently I have spent time with
10681 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
10682 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10683 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
10684 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
10685 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
10686 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
10687 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
10688 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
10689
10690 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
10691 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
10692 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
10693 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
10694 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
10695 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
10696 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
10697 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
10698
10699 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
10700 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
10701 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
10702 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
10703 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
10704 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
10705 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
10706 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
10707
10708 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
10709 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
10710 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
10711 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
10712 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
10713 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
10714 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
10715 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
10716 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
10717 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
10718
10719 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
10720 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
10721 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
10722 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
10723
10724 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
10725 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
10726
10727       </div>
10728       <div class="tags">
10729
10730
10731         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>.
10732
10733
10734       </div>
10735     </div>
10736     <div class="padding"></div>
10737
10738     <div class="entry">
10739       <div class="title">
10740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
10741       </div>
10742       <div class="date">
10743          5th April 2012
10744       </div>
10745       <div class="body">
10746         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
10747 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
10748 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
10749 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
10750 for schools.  Check out his article
10751 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
10752 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
10753
10754       </div>
10755       <div class="tags">
10756
10757
10758         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>.
10759
10760
10761       </div>
10762     </div>
10763     <div class="padding"></div>
10764
10765     <div class="entry">
10766       <div class="title">
10767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
10768       </div>
10769       <div class="date">
10770          1st April 2012
10771       </div>
10772       <div class="body">
10773         <p>Germany is a core area for the
10774 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10775 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
10776 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
10777
10778 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10779
10780 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
10781 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
10782 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
10783 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
10784 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
10785 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
10786 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
10787 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
10788
10789 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
10790 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
10791 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
10792 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
10793 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
10794 the end of April this year.</p>
10795
10796 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10797 project?</strong></p>
10798
10799 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
10800 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
10801 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
10802 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
10803 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
10804 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10805 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10806 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10807 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10808 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10809 Skolelinux.</p>
10810
10811 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10812 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10813 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10814 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10815 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10816 the admin teachers.</p>
10817
10818 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10819 Edu?</strong></p>
10820
10821 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
10822 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10823 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
10824
10825 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
10826 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10827 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
10828 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10829 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
10830
10831 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10832 Edu?</strong></p>
10833
10834 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
10835
10836 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10837
10838 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10839 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10840 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10841 LibreOffice.</p>
10842
10843 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10844 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10845
10846 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10847 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10848 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
10849
10850       </div>
10851       <div class="tags">
10852
10853
10854         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>.
10855
10856
10857       </div>
10858     </div>
10859     <div class="padding"></div>
10860
10861     <div class="entry">
10862       <div class="title">
10863         <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>
10864       </div>
10865       <div class="date">
10866         25th March 2012
10867       </div>
10868       <div class="body">
10869         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
10870
10871 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10872 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10873 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10874 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10875 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10876 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
10877 and download as a
10878 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
10879 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
10880
10881 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
10882   <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"' />
10883     <p>Download video as
10884       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
10885 </video></p>
10886
10887       </div>
10888       <div class="tags">
10889
10890
10891         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>.
10892
10893
10894       </div>
10895     </div>
10896     <div class="padding"></div>
10897
10898     <div class="entry">
10899       <div class="title">
10900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
10901       </div>
10902       <div class="date">
10903         19th March 2012
10904       </div>
10905       <div class="body">
10906         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
10907 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10908 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10909 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10910 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
10911
10912 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10913
10914 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10915 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10916 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10917 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10918 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10919 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10920 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
10921 installations.</p>
10922
10923 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10924 project?</strong></p>
10925
10926 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10927 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10928 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10929 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10930 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10931 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10932 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10933 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10934 these things we decided to try it.</p>
10935
10936 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10937 Edu?</strong></p>
10938
10939 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10940 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
10941 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10942 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10943 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10944 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10945 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10946 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
10947
10948 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10949 Edu?</strong></p>
10950
10951 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
10952 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10953 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10954 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10955 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
10956
10957 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10958
10959 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10960 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10961 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
10962 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
10963 that counts...)</p>
10964
10965 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10966 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10967
10968 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
10969 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
10970 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
10971 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
10972 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
10973 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
10974 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
10975 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
10976 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
10977 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
10978 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
10979
10980 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
10981 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
10982 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
10983
10984       </div>
10985       <div class="tags">
10986
10987
10988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10989
10990
10991       </div>
10992     </div>
10993     <div class="padding"></div>
10994
10995     <div class="entry">
10996       <div class="title">
10997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
10998       </div>
10999       <div class="date">
11000         16th March 2012
11001       </div>
11002       <div class="body">
11003         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
11004 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
11005 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
11006 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
11007
11008 <ol>
11009
11010 <li>The documentation is written in a
11011 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
11012 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
11013 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
11014 docbook XML.</li>
11015
11016 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
11017 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
11018 with the translated text.</li>
11019
11020 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
11021 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
11022 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
11023 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
11024 images.</li>
11025
11026 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
11027 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
11028
11029 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
11030 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
11031
11032 </ol>
11033
11034 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
11035 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
11036 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
11037 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
11038 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
11039
11040 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
11041 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
11042 package</a>.</p>
11043
11044       </div>
11045       <div class="tags">
11046
11047
11048         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>.
11049
11050
11051       </div>
11052     </div>
11053     <div class="padding"></div>
11054
11055     <div class="entry">
11056       <div class="title">
11057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
11058       </div>
11059       <div class="date">
11060         11th March 2012
11061       </div>
11062       <div class="body">
11063         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
11064 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
11065 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11066 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
11067 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
11068 you have not done so already.</p>
11069
11070 <p>I plan to present the new version at
11071 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
11072 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
11073 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
11074
11075       </div>
11076       <div class="tags">
11077
11078
11079         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>.
11080
11081
11082       </div>
11083     </div>
11084     <div class="padding"></div>
11085
11086     <div class="entry">
11087       <div class="title">
11088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
11089       </div>
11090       <div class="date">
11091          9th March 2012
11092       </div>
11093       <div class="body">
11094         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
11095 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
11096 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11097 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
11098 more international audience.</p>
11099
11100 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11101 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
11102 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
11103 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
11104 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
11105 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
11106 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
11107
11108
11109 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11110
11111 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
11112 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
11113 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
11114 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
11115 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
11116 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
11117 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
11118 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
11119 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
11120 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
11121 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
11122
11123 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11124 project?</strong></p>
11125
11126 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
11127 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
11128 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
11129 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
11130 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
11131 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
11132 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
11133 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
11134 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
11135 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
11136 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
11137 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
11138 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
11139
11140 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11141 Edu?</strong></p>
11142
11143 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
11144 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
11145 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
11146 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
11147 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
11148 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
11149 Japan.</p>
11150
11151 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11152 Edu?</strong></p>
11153
11154 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
11155 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
11156 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
11157 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
11158 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
11159 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
11160 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
11161 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
11162 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
11163 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
11164 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
11165 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
11166 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
11167 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
11168 help.</p>
11169
11170 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11171
11172 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
11173 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
11174 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
11175 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
11176 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
11177 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
11178 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
11179 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
11180 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
11181 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
11182 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
11183
11184 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11185 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11186
11187 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
11188 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
11189 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
11190 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
11191 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
11192 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
11193 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
11194 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
11195 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
11196 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
11197 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
11198 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
11199
11200       </div>
11201       <div class="tags">
11202
11203
11204         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>.
11205
11206
11207       </div>
11208     </div>
11209     <div class="padding"></div>
11210
11211     <div class="entry">
11212       <div class="title">
11213         <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>
11214       </div>
11215       <div class="date">
11216          7th March 2012
11217       </div>
11218       <div class="body">
11219         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
11220
11221 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
11222 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
11223 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
11224 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
11225 download as a
11226 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
11227 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
11228
11229 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
11230   <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"' />
11231     <p>Download video as
11232       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
11233 </video></p>
11234
11235       </div>
11236       <div class="tags">
11237
11238
11239         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>.
11240
11241
11242       </div>
11243     </div>
11244     <div class="padding"></div>
11245
11246     <div class="entry">
11247       <div class="title">
11248         <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>
11249       </div>
11250       <div class="date">
11251          4th March 2012
11252       </div>
11253       <div class="body">
11254         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
11255 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11256 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11257 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
11258 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
11259 need a software solution for your school.</p>
11260
11261       </div>
11262       <div class="tags">
11263
11264
11265         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>.
11266
11267
11268       </div>
11269     </div>
11270     <div class="padding"></div>
11271
11272     <div class="entry">
11273       <div class="title">
11274         <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>
11275       </div>
11276       <div class="date">
11277          3rd March 2012
11278       </div>
11279       <div class="body">
11280         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
11281 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
11282 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
11283 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
11284 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
11285 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
11286 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
11287 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
11288 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
11289 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
11290 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
11291 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
11292 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
11293 year...</p>
11294
11295 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
11296 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
11297 name,
11298 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
11299 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
11300 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
11301 mean). I've been following
11302 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
11303 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
11304 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
11305 Check it out. :)</p>
11306
11307       </div>
11308       <div class="tags">
11309
11310
11311         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>.
11312
11313
11314       </div>
11315     </div>
11316     <div class="padding"></div>
11317
11318     <div class="entry">
11319       <div class="title">
11320         <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>
11321       </div>
11322       <div class="date">
11323         27th February 2012
11324       </div>
11325       <div class="body">
11326         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
11327 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11328 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
11329 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
11330 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
11331 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
11332 need a software solution for your school.</p>
11333
11334       </div>
11335       <div class="tags">
11336
11337
11338         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>.
11339
11340
11341       </div>
11342     </div>
11343     <div class="padding"></div>
11344
11345     <div class="entry">
11346       <div class="title">
11347         <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>
11348       </div>
11349       <div class="date">
11350         19th February 2012
11351       </div>
11352       <div class="body">
11353         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
11354 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
11355 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11356 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11357 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
11358 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
11359 solution for your school.</p>
11360
11361       </div>
11362       <div class="tags">
11363
11364
11365         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>.
11366
11367
11368       </div>
11369     </div>
11370     <div class="padding"></div>
11371
11372     <div class="entry">
11373       <div class="title">
11374         <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>
11375       </div>
11376       <div class="date">
11377         14th February 2012
11378       </div>
11379       <div class="body">
11380         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
11381 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
11382 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
11383 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
11384 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
11385 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
11386 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
11387 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
11388 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
11389
11390 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
11391 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
11392 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
11393 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
11394 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
11395
11396 <blockquote><pre>
11397 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
11398 do
11399     printf "Failed disk $d: "
11400     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
11401 done
11402 </blockquote></pre>
11403
11404 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
11405 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
11406
11407 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
11408
11409 <blockquote><pre>
11410 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11411 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11412 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
11413 </blockquote></pre>
11414
11415 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
11416 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
11417 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
11418 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
11419 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
11420 mounted inside my box.</p>
11421
11422 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
11423 Software RAID in the
11424 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
11425 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
11426 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
11427 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
11428 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
11429 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
11430
11431       </div>
11432       <div class="tags">
11433
11434
11435         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>.
11436
11437
11438       </div>
11439     </div>
11440     <div class="padding"></div>
11441
11442     <div class="entry">
11443       <div class="title">
11444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11445       </div>
11446       <div class="date">
11447         13th February 2012
11448       </div>
11449       <div class="body">
11450         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
11451 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
11452 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
11453 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
11454 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
11455 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
11456 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
11457 change the global proxy setting by editing
11458 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
11459 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
11460
11461 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
11462 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
11463 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
11464
11465 <blockquote><pre>
11466 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
11467 {
11468    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
11469        isPlainHostName(host) ||
11470        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
11471       return "DIRECT";
11472    else
11473       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
11474 }
11475 </pre></blockquote>
11476
11477 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
11478
11479 <blockquote><pre>
11480 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11481 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11482 </pre></blockquote>
11483
11484 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
11485 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
11486 would be used for
11487 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
11488 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
11489 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
11490 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
11491 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
11492 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
11493 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
11494 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
11495 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
11496 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
11497
11498 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
11499 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
11500 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
11501 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
11502 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
11503 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
11504
11505 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
11506 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
11507 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
11508 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
11509 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
11510 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
11511 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
11512 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
11513 the network setup changes.</p>
11514
11515 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
11516 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
11517 draft</a> and a
11518 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
11519 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
11520
11521       </div>
11522       <div class="tags">
11523
11524
11525         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>.
11526
11527
11528       </div>
11529     </div>
11530     <div class="padding"></div>
11531
11532     <div class="entry">
11533       <div class="title">
11534         <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>
11535       </div>
11536       <div class="date">
11537          5th February 2012
11538       </div>
11539       <div class="body">
11540         <p>Since the Lenny version of
11541 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
11542 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
11543 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
11544 in the morning.  This is done using the
11545 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
11546
11547 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
11548 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
11549 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
11550 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
11551 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
11552 the
11553 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
11554 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
11555 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
11556 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
11557 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
11558
11559 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
11560 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
11561 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
11562 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
11563 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
11564 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
11565 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
11566
11567 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
11568 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
11569 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
11570 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
11571 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
11572
11573       </div>
11574       <div class="tags">
11575
11576
11577         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>.
11578
11579
11580       </div>
11581     </div>
11582     <div class="padding"></div>
11583
11584     <div class="entry">
11585       <div class="title">
11586         <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>
11587       </div>
11588       <div class="date">
11589          4th February 2012
11590       </div>
11591       <div class="body">
11592         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
11593 publish the third beta version of
11594 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11595 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
11596 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
11597 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
11598 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11599 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
11600 on the project announcement list.</p>
11601
11602 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
11603 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
11604
11605 <ul>
11606
11607 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
11608   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
11609   the installation.</li>
11610
11611 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
11612   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
11613
11614 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
11615   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
11616   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
11617
11618 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
11619   for the local system administrator is created during installation
11620   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
11621   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
11622   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
11623   up to date on the system.</li>
11624
11625 </ul>
11626
11627 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
11628 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
11629 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
11630 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
11631
11632 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
11633 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
11634 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
11635 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
11636 will see you there?</p>
11637
11638       </div>
11639       <div class="tags">
11640
11641
11642         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>.
11643
11644
11645       </div>
11646     </div>
11647     <div class="padding"></div>
11648
11649     <div class="entry">
11650       <div class="title">
11651         <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>
11652       </div>
11653       <div class="date">
11654         27th January 2012
11655       </div>
11656       <div class="body">
11657         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
11658 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
11659 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
11660 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
11661 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
11662 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
11663 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
11664
11665 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
11666 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
11667 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
11668 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
11669 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
11670 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
11671 not taken care of by this.</p>
11672
11673 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
11674 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
11675 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
11676 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
11677 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
11678 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
11679 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
11680 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
11681 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
11682 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
11683 firmware packages.</p>
11684
11685 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
11686 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
11687 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
11688 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
11689 initrd with extra firmware, the
11690 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
11691 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
11692 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
11693
11694 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
11695 network cards working.  For this,
11696 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
11697 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
11698 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
11699
11700 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
11701 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
11702 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
11703
11704 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
11705 try.</p>
11706
11707       </div>
11708       <div class="tags">
11709
11710
11711         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>.
11712
11713
11714       </div>
11715     </div>
11716     <div class="padding"></div>
11717
11718     <div class="entry">
11719       <div class="title">
11720         <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>
11721       </div>
11722       <div class="date">
11723         25th January 2012
11724       </div>
11725       <div class="body">
11726         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
11727 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
11728 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
11729 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
11730 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
11731
11732 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
11733 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
11734 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
11735 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
11736 this is done, log on to the central server and run
11737 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
11738 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
11739 will look similar to this:</p>
11740
11741 <p><blockquote><pre>
11742 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
11743 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
11744 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.
11745
11746 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
11747
11748 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11749 enter password: *******
11750 %
11751 </pre></blockquote></p>
11752
11753 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
11754 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
11755 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
11756 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
11757 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
11758 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
11759 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
11760 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
11761 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
11762 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
11763 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
11764 automatically.</p>
11765
11766 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
11767 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
11768
11769 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
11770 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
11771 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
11772
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="tags">
11775
11776
11777         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>.
11778
11779
11780       </div>
11781     </div>
11782     <div class="padding"></div>
11783
11784     <div class="entry">
11785       <div class="title">
11786         <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>
11787       </div>
11788       <div class="date">
11789         10th January 2012
11790       </div>
11791       <div class="body">
11792         <p>In the Squeeze version of
11793 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
11794 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
11795 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
11796 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
11797 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
11798 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
11799 first time.</p>
11800
11801 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
11802 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
11803 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
11804 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
11805
11806 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11807 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
11808 new setting.</p>
11809
11810 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11811 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11812 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
11813
11814       </div>
11815       <div class="tags">
11816
11817
11818         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>.
11819
11820
11821       </div>
11822     </div>
11823     <div class="padding"></div>
11824
11825     <div class="entry">
11826       <div class="title">
11827         <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>
11828       </div>
11829       <div class="date">
11830          7th January 2012
11831       </div>
11832       <div class="body">
11833         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11834 the second beta version of
11835 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
11836 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11837 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11838 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11839 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11840 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
11841 on the project announcement list.</p>
11842
11843       </div>
11844       <div class="tags">
11845
11846
11847         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>.
11848
11849
11850       </div>
11851     </div>
11852     <div class="padding"></div>
11853
11854     <div class="entry">
11855       <div class="title">
11856         <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>
11857       </div>
11858       <div class="date">
11859          3rd January 2012
11860       </div>
11861       <div class="body">
11862         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11863 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
11864 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11865 interesting.</p>
11866
11867 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11868 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11869 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11870 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11871 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11872 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11873 wrap up its tasks.</p>
11874
11875 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11876 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11877 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11878 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11879 because I was typing.</P>
11880
11881 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11882 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11883 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11884 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
11885 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11886 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11887 generate entropy.</p>
11888
11889 <p>The fix is in
11890 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
11891 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
11892 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
11893 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
11894
11895       </div>
11896       <div class="tags">
11897
11898
11899         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>.
11900
11901
11902       </div>
11903     </div>
11904     <div class="padding"></div>
11905
11906     <div class="entry">
11907       <div class="title">
11908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
11909       </div>
11910       <div class="date">
11911         21st November 2011
11912       </div>
11913       <div class="body">
11914         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11915 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11916 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11917 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
11918 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11919 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11920 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11921 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11922 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11923 the tools to do so.</p>
11924
11925 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11926 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11927 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11928 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
11929
11930 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11931 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
11932 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11933 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11934 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11935 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11936 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11937 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
11938
11939 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11940 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11941 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
11942
11943 <p><pre>
11944 #!/usr/bin/perl
11945 use strict;
11946 use warnings;
11947 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11948 BEGIN {
11949     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11950     my %rhelmodules = (
11951         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
11952         );
11953     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11954         eval "use $module;";
11955         if ($@) {
11956             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11957             system("yum install -y $pkg");
11958             eval "use $module;";
11959         }
11960     }
11961 }
11962 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
11963
11964 upgrade_dell();
11965
11966 exit 0;
11967
11968 sub run_firmware_script {
11969     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11970     unless ($script) {
11971         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
11972         exit 1
11973     }
11974     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
11975
11976     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11977         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
11978     } else {
11979         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
11980     }
11981 }
11982
11983 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11984     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11985     # Run firmware packages
11986     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11987         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
11988         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
11989         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11990             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11991             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
11992         }
11993         closedir $dh;
11994     }
11995 }
11996
11997 sub download {
11998     my $url = shift;
11999     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
12000     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
12001 }
12002
12003 sub upgrade_dell {
12004     my @dirs;
12005     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12006     chomp $product;
12007
12008     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
12009
12010         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
12011         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
12012
12013         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
12014             CLEANUP => 1
12015             );
12016         chdir($tmpdir);
12017         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
12018         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
12019         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
12020         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
12021         my $fwopts = "-q";
12022         if (@paths) {
12023             for my $url (@paths) {
12024                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
12025             }
12026             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
12027         } else {
12028             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12029             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12030         }
12031         chdir('/');
12032     } else {
12033         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12034         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12035     }
12036 }
12037
12038 sub fetch_dell_fw {
12039     my $path = shift;
12040     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
12041     download($url);
12042 }
12043
12044 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
12045 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
12046 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
12047 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
12048     my $filename = shift;
12049
12050     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12051     chomp $product;
12052     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
12053
12054     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
12055
12056     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
12057     my @paths;
12058     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
12059         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
12060         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
12061         my $oscode;
12062         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
12063             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
12064         } else {
12065             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
12066         }
12067         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
12068         {
12069             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
12070         }
12071     }
12072     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
12073         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
12074
12075         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
12076         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
12077
12078         my $cpath = $component->{path};
12079         for my $path (@paths) {
12080             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
12081                 push(@paths, $cpath);
12082             }
12083         }
12084     }
12085     return @paths;
12086 }
12087 </pre>
12088
12089 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
12090 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
12091 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
12092 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
12093 outdated.</p>
12094
12095       </div>
12096       <div class="tags">
12097
12098
12099         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>.
12100
12101
12102       </div>
12103     </div>
12104     <div class="padding"></div>
12105
12106     <div class="entry">
12107       <div class="title">
12108         <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>
12109       </div>
12110       <div class="date">
12111          7th October 2011
12112       </div>
12113       <div class="body">
12114         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
12115 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
12116 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
12117 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
12118 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
12119 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
12120 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
12121 models.</p>
12122
12123 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
12124 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
12125 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
12126 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
12127
12128 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
12129 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
12130 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
12131 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
12132 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
12133 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
12134 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
12135 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
12136 distributed.</p>
12137
12138 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
12139
12140 <ul>
12141
12142 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
12143   other relevant equipment.</li>
12144
12145 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
12146
12147 </ul>
12148
12149 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
12150 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
12151 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
12152 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
12153 books available.</p>
12154
12155 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
12156 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
12157 libraries. :)</p>
12158
12159       </div>
12160       <div class="tags">
12161
12162
12163         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>.
12164
12165
12166       </div>
12167     </div>
12168     <div class="padding"></div>
12169
12170     <div class="entry">
12171       <div class="title">
12172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
12173       </div>
12174       <div class="date">
12175         17th September 2011
12176       </div>
12177       <div class="body">
12178         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
12179 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
12180 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
12181 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
12182 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
12183 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
12184 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
12185 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
12186
12187 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
12188
12189 <blockquote><pre>
12190 #!/bin/sh
12191 # apt-get install lsdvd
12192 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
12193 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
12194 </pre></blockquote>
12195
12196 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
12197 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
12198 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
12199 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
12200
12201 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
12202 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
12203 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
12204 back as an ISO.
12205
12206 <blockquote><pre>
12207 #!/bin/sh
12208 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
12209 set -e
12210 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
12211 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
12212 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
12213 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
12214 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
12215 </pre></blockquote>
12216
12217 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
12218
12219 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
12220 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
12221 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
12222 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
12223 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
12224
12225 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
12226 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
12227 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
12228 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
12229 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
12230 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
12231
12232       </div>
12233       <div class="tags">
12234
12235
12236         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>.
12237
12238
12239       </div>
12240     </div>
12241     <div class="padding"></div>
12242
12243     <div class="entry">
12244       <div class="title">
12245         <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>
12246       </div>
12247       <div class="date">
12248          4th August 2011
12249       </div>
12250       <div class="body">
12251         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
12252 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
12253 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
12254 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
12255 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
12256 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
12257 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
12258 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
12259 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
12260
12261 <p><blockquote>
12262 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
12263 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
12264 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
12265 </blockquote></p>
12266
12267 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
12268 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
12269 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
12270 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
12271 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
12272 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
12273 hard to explain.</p>
12274
12275 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
12276 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
12277 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
12278 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
12279 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
12280 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
12281 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
12282 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
12283 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
12284 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
12285 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
12286 mode).</p>
12287
12288 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
12289 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
12290 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
12291 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
12292 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
12293 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
12294 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
12295 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
12296 after visiting single user mode.</p>
12297
12298 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
12299 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
12300 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
12301 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
12302 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
12303 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
12304 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
12305 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
12306
12307 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
12308 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
12309 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
12310
12311       </div>
12312       <div class="tags">
12313
12314
12315         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>.
12316
12317
12318       </div>
12319     </div>
12320     <div class="padding"></div>
12321
12322     <div class="entry">
12323       <div class="title">
12324         <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>
12325       </div>
12326       <div class="date">
12327         30th July 2011
12328       </div>
12329       <div class="body">
12330         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
12331 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
12332 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
12333 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
12334 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
12335 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
12336 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
12337 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
12338 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
12339 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
12340 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
12341 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
12342 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
12343
12344 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
12345 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
12346 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
12347 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
12348 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
12349 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
12350 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
12351 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
12352 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
12353
12354 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
12355 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
12356 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
12357 is presented.</p>
12358
12359 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
12360 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
12361 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
12362 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
12363 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
12364 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
12365 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
12366 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
12367 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
12368 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
12369 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
12370 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
12371 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
12372 find time to push this forward.</p>
12373
12374       </div>
12375       <div class="tags">
12376
12377
12378         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>.
12379
12380
12381       </div>
12382     </div>
12383     <div class="padding"></div>
12384
12385     <div class="entry">
12386       <div class="title">
12387         <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>
12388       </div>
12389       <div class="date">
12390         29th July 2011
12391       </div>
12392       <div class="body">
12393         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12394 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12395 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12396 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12397 issues.</p>
12398
12399 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12400 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12401 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
12402
12403 <ol>
12404
12405 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
12406 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12407 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12408 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12409 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12410 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12411 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12412 Debian.</li>
12413
12414 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12415 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12416 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12417 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12418 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12419 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12420 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12421 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12422 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12423 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12424 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12425 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12426 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
12427
12428 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12429 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
12430 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12431 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12432 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12433 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12434 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12435 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12436 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12437 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
12438
12439 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
12440 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12441 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12442 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12443 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12444 latter behaviour.</li>
12445
12446 </ol>
12447
12448 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12449 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12450 it do not matter much.</p>
12451
12452 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12453 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12454 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
12455
12456       </div>
12457       <div class="tags">
12458
12459
12460         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>.
12461
12462
12463       </div>
12464     </div>
12465     <div class="padding"></div>
12466
12467     <div class="entry">
12468       <div class="title">
12469         <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>
12470       </div>
12471       <div class="date">
12472         26th July 2011
12473       </div>
12474       <div class="body">
12475         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
12476 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12477 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12478 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12479 security support for a few years.</p>
12480
12481 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12482 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12483 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12484 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
12485 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12486 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
12487 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12488 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12489 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12490 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12491 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12492 easier in the future.</p>
12493
12494 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12495 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
12496 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12497 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12498 do not have time for.</p>
12499
12500       </div>
12501       <div class="tags">
12502
12503
12504         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>.
12505
12506
12507       </div>
12508     </div>
12509     <div class="padding"></div>
12510
12511     <div class="entry">
12512       <div class="title">
12513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
12514       </div>
12515       <div class="date">
12516         20th June 2011
12517       </div>
12518       <div class="body">
12519         <p>Reading
12520 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
12521 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
12522 parts of the
12523 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
12524 and
12525 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
12526 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
12527 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
12528 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
12529
12530       </div>
12531       <div class="tags">
12532
12533
12534         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>.
12535
12536
12537       </div>
12538     </div>
12539     <div class="padding"></div>
12540
12541     <div class="entry">
12542       <div class="title">
12543         <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>
12544       </div>
12545       <div class="date">
12546         30th April 2011
12547       </div>
12548       <div class="body">
12549         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
12550 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
12551 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
12552 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
12553 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
12554 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
12555 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
12556 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
12557 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
12558 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
12559
12560 <p>Where is it?  Visit
12561 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
12562 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
12563 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
12564 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
12565
12566       </div>
12567       <div class="tags">
12568
12569
12570         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>.
12571
12572
12573       </div>
12574     </div>
12575     <div class="padding"></div>
12576
12577     <div class="entry">
12578       <div class="title">
12579         <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>
12580       </div>
12581       <div class="date">
12582         29th April 2011
12583       </div>
12584       <div class="body">
12585         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
12586 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
12587 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
12588 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
12589 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
12590 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
12591 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
12592 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
12593 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
12594 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
12595 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
12596 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
12597 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
12598
12599 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
12600 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
12601 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
12602 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
12603 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
12604 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
12605 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
12606 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
12607 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
12608 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
12609 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
12610 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
12611 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
12612
12613 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
12614 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
12615 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
12616 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
12617 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
12618 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
12619 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
12620 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
12621 it.</p>
12622
12623 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
12624 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
12625 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
12626 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
12627 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
12628 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
12629 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
12630
12631 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
12632 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
12633 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
12634 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
12635 and range= options.</p>
12636
12637 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
12638 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
12639 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
12640 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
12641 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
12642 to best handle this.  I've noticed
12643 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
12644 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
12645 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
12646 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
12647
12648 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
12649 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
12650 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
12651 discussions instead of only
12652 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
12653 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
12654 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
12655 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
12656 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
12657 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
12658
12659       </div>
12660       <div class="tags">
12661
12662
12663         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>.
12664
12665
12666       </div>
12667     </div>
12668     <div class="padding"></div>
12669
12670     <div class="entry">
12671       <div class="title">
12672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
12673       </div>
12674       <div class="date">
12675          6th April 2011
12676       </div>
12677       <div class="body">
12678         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
12679 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
12680 A few days ago the project
12681 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
12682 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
12683 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
12684 into Gnash.</p>
12685
12686       </div>
12687       <div class="tags">
12688
12689
12690         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>.
12691
12692
12693       </div>
12694     </div>
12695     <div class="padding"></div>
12696
12697     <div class="entry">
12698       <div class="title">
12699         <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>
12700       </div>
12701       <div class="date">
12702          3rd April 2011
12703       </div>
12704       <div class="body">
12705         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12706 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12707 update in English.</p>
12708
12709 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12710 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12711 of the British service
12712 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
12713 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12714 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12715 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12716 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
12717 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12718 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12719 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12720 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12721 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
12722 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
12723 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12724 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
12725
12726 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12727 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12728 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12729 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12730 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12731 public infrastructure.</p>
12732
12733 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12734 such service?</p>
12735
12736       </div>
12737       <div class="tags">
12738
12739
12740         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>.
12741
12742
12743       </div>
12744     </div>
12745     <div class="padding"></div>
12746
12747     <div class="entry">
12748       <div class="title">
12749         <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>
12750       </div>
12751       <div class="date">
12752         28th January 2011
12753       </div>
12754       <div class="body">
12755         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12756 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12757 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12758 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12759 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12760 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12761 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12762 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12763 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12764 out which security holes were present in our free software
12765 collection.</p>
12766
12767 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12768 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12769 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12770 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12771 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12772 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12773 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12774 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
12775 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12776 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12777 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
12778 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
12779 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12780 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12781 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
12782 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
12783
12784 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12785 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12786 check out, one could look up
12787 <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
12788 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12789 The most recent one is
12790 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
12791 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12792 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
12793
12794 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12795 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
12796 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12797 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12798 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12799 security issues out.</p>
12800
12801 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12802 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12803 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12804 RHEL is providing
12805 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
12806 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
12807 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
12808
12809 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12810 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12811 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12812 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12813 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12814 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12815 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12816 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12817 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12818 established soon.</p>
12819
12820 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12821 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12822 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12823 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12824 for their packages.</p>
12825
12826       </div>
12827       <div class="tags">
12828
12829
12830         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>.
12831
12832
12833       </div>
12834     </div>
12835     <div class="padding"></div>
12836
12837     <div class="entry">
12838       <div class="title">
12839         <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>
12840       </div>
12841       <div class="date">
12842         23rd January 2011
12843       </div>
12844       <div class="body">
12845         <p>In the
12846 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
12847 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12848 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12849 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12850 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12851 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12852 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12853 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12854 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
12855 one of my machines like this:</p>
12856
12857 <pre>
12858 loaded modules:
12859 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12860 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12861 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12862 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12863 10de:03ec pata_amd
12864 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12865 1022:1103 k8temp
12866 109e:036e bttv
12867 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12868 11ab:4364 sky2
12869 </pre>
12870
12871 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12872 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
12873
12874 <pre>
12875 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12876     echo loaded pci modules:
12877     (
12878         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12879         for address in * ; do
12880             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12881                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12882                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12883                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12884                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
12885                     echo "$id $module"
12886                 fi
12887             fi
12888         done
12889     )
12890     echo
12891 fi
12892 </pre>
12893
12894 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12895 mappings:</p>
12896
12897 <pre>
12898 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12899     echo loaded usb modules:
12900     (
12901         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12902         for address in * ; do
12903             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
12904                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12905                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
12906                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12907                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
12908                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
12909                         echo "$id $module"
12910                     fi
12911                 fi
12912             fi
12913         done
12914     )
12915     echo
12916 fi
12917 </pre>
12918
12919 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12920 well.</p>
12921
12922       </div>
12923       <div class="tags">
12924
12925
12926         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>.
12927
12928
12929       </div>
12930     </div>
12931     <div class="padding"></div>
12932
12933     <div class="entry">
12934       <div class="title">
12935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
12936       </div>
12937       <div class="date">
12938         16th January 2011
12939       </div>
12940       <div class="body">
12941         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12942 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12943 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12944 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12945 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12946 the Wikipedia article on
12947 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
12948 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12949 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12950 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12951 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12952 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12953 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12954 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12955 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12956 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12957 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12958 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
12959
12960 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12961 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12962 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12963 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12964 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
12965 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12966 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12967 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
12968 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
12969 from last week</a>.</p>
12970
12971 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12972 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12973 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12974 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12975 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12976 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12977 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
12978
12979 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12980 available from
12981 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
12982 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
12983 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
12984
12985 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12986 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12987 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12988 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
12989
12990       </div>
12991       <div class="tags">
12992
12993
12994         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>.
12995
12996
12997       </div>
12998     </div>
12999     <div class="padding"></div>
13000
13001     <div class="entry">
13002       <div class="title">
13003         <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>
13004       </div>
13005       <div class="date">
13006         12th January 2011
13007       </div>
13008       <div class="body">
13009         <p>Today I discovered
13010 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
13011 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
13012 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
13013 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
13014 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
13015 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
13016 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
13017 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
13018 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
13019 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
13020 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
13021 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
13022 on the Google announcement is available from
13023 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
13024 A good read. :)</p>
13025
13026 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
13027 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
13028 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
13029 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
13030 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
13031 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
13032 browsers support H.264, and others support
13033 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
13034 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
13035 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
13036 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
13037 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
13038 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
13039 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
13040 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
13041
13042 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
13043 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
13044 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
13045 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
13046 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
13047 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
13048 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
13049
13050 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
13051 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
13052 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
13053 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
13054 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
13055 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
13056 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
13057
13058 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
13059 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
13060 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
13061 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
13062 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
13063 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
13064 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
13065
13066 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
13067 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
13068 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
13069 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
13070 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
13071 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
13072 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
13073 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
13074 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
13075 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
13076 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
13077 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
13078 I guess time will tell.</p>
13079
13080 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
13081 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
13082 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
13083
13084       </div>
13085       <div class="tags">
13086
13087
13088         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>.
13089
13090
13091       </div>
13092     </div>
13093     <div class="padding"></div>
13094
13095     <div class="entry">
13096       <div class="title">
13097         <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>
13098       </div>
13099       <div class="date">
13100         30th December 2010
13101       </div>
13102       <div class="body">
13103         <p>After trying to
13104 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
13105 Ogg Theora</a> to
13106 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
13107 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
13108 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
13109 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
13110 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
13111 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
13112 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
13113
13114 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
13115 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
13116 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
13117 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
13118 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
13119 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
13120 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
13121
13122 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
13123 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
13124
13125       </div>
13126       <div class="tags">
13127
13128
13129         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>.
13130
13131
13132       </div>
13133     </div>
13134     <div class="padding"></div>
13135
13136     <div class="entry">
13137       <div class="title">
13138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
13139       </div>
13140       <div class="date">
13141         27th December 2010
13142       </div>
13143       <div class="body">
13144         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
13145 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
13146 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
13147 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
13148 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
13149 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
13150 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
13151 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
13152
13153 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
13154 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
13155 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
13156 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
13157 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
13158 page</a>.</p>
13159
13160 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
13161 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
13162 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
13163 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
13164 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
13165 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
13166 specification on equal terms.</p>
13167
13168 <blockquote>
13169
13170 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
13171 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
13172 open standard:</p>
13173
13174 <ul>
13175
13176 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13177 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13178 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
13179 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
13180
13181 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
13182 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
13183 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
13184 nominal fee.</li>
13185
13186 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
13187 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
13188 free basis.</li>
13189
13190 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
13191
13192 </ul>
13193 </blockquote>
13194
13195 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
13196 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
13197 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
13198 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
13199 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
13200 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
13201 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
13202
13203 <blockquote>
13204
13205 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
13206
13207 <ol>
13208
13209 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
13210 tilgængelig.</li>
13211
13212 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
13213 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
13214
13215 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
13216 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
13217
13218 </ol>
13219
13220 </blockquote>
13221
13222 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
13223 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
13224
13225 <blockquote>
13226
13227 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
13228
13229 <ol>
13230
13231 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
13232 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
13233
13234 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
13235 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
13236 Standard themselves;</li>
13237
13238 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
13239 any party or in any business model;</li>
13240
13241 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
13242 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
13243 parties;</li>
13244
13245 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
13246 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
13247 parties.</li>
13248
13249 </ol>
13250
13251 </blockquote>
13252
13253 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
13254 its
13255 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
13256 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
13257
13258 <blockquote>
13259 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
13260
13261 <ul>
13262
13263 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
13264   democratic:
13265
13266          <ul>
13267
13268          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
13269             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
13270             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
13271             and managed.</li>
13272
13273          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
13274             method, can be changed through input from all
13275             participants.</li>
13276
13277          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
13278             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
13279
13280          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
13281             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
13282
13283          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
13284             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
13285             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
13286
13287          </ul>
13288
13289 </li>
13290
13291 </ul>
13292
13293 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
13294 <ul>
13295
13296 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
13297   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
13298   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
13299   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
13300   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
13301
13302 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
13303   a technical or economic barriers</li>
13304
13305 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
13306   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
13307   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
13308   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
13309   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
13310   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
13311   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
13312   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
13313   intended to function.</li>
13314
13315 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
13316   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
13317   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
13318
13319 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
13320   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
13321   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
13322   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
13323   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
13324   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
13325   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
13326   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
13327
13328       <ul>
13329
13330       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
13331         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
13332         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
13333
13334       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
13335         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
13336         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
13337         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
13338
13339       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
13340         licensor</li>
13341
13342       </ul>
13343 </li>
13344
13345 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
13346   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
13347   or restricted licensing terms</li>
13348
13349 </ul>
13350
13351 </blockquote>
13352
13353 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
13354 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
13355 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
13356 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
13357 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
13358 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
13359 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
13360 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
13361 Standards.</p>
13362
13363       </div>
13364       <div class="tags">
13365
13366
13367         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>.
13368
13369
13370       </div>
13371     </div>
13372     <div class="padding"></div>
13373
13374     <div class="entry">
13375       <div class="title">
13376         <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>
13377       </div>
13378       <div class="date">
13379         25th December 2010
13380       </div>
13381       <div class="body">
13382         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
13383 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
13384
13385 <blockquote>
13386
13387 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
13388 as follows:</p>
13389
13390 <ol>
13391
13392 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
13393 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
13394 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
13395
13396 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13397 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13398 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
13399 parties.</li>
13400
13401 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
13402 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
13403 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
13404
13405 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
13406 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
13407
13408 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
13409
13410 </ol>
13411
13412 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
13413 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
13414 products based on the standard.</p>
13415 </blockquote>
13416
13417 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
13418 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
13419 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
13420 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
13421 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
13422 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
13423 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
13424 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
13425
13426 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
13427
13428 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
13429 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
13430 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
13431 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
13432 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
13433 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
13434 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
13435 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
13436 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
13437 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
13438 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
13439 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
13440 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
13441 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
13442
13443 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
13444
13445 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
13446 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
13447 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
13448 documentation indicating this.</p>
13449
13450 <p>According to
13451 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
13452 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
13453 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
13454 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
13455 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
13456 report is correct.</p>
13457
13458 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
13459
13460 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
13461 container format</a> and both the
13462 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
13463 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
13464 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
13465
13466 <blockquote>
13467
13468 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
13469 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
13470 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
13471 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
13472 specification compliance.
13473
13474 </blockquote>
13475
13476 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
13477 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
13478 this is the term:<p>
13479
13480 <blockquote>
13481
13482 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
13483 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
13484 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
13485 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
13486 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
13487 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
13488 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
13489 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
13490 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
13491 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
13492 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
13493 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
13494
13495 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
13496 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
13497 </blockquote>
13498
13499 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
13500 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
13501 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
13502 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
13503 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
13504
13505 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
13506
13507 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
13508 Theora format.
13509 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
13510 and
13511 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
13512 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
13513 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
13514 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
13515 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
13516 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
13517 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
13518 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
13519
13520 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
13521
13522 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
13523
13524 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
13525
13526 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
13527 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
13528 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
13529 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
13530 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
13531 this.</p>
13532
13533 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
13534 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
13535
13536       </div>
13537       <div class="tags">
13538
13539
13540         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>.
13541
13542
13543       </div>
13544     </div>
13545     <div class="padding"></div>
13546
13547     <div class="entry">
13548       <div class="title">
13549         <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>
13550       </div>
13551       <div class="date">
13552         25th December 2010
13553       </div>
13554       <div class="body">
13555         <p>A few days ago
13556 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
13557 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
13558 2.0 of
13559 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
13560 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
13561 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
13562 Nothing very surprising there, given
13563 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
13564 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
13565 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
13566 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
13567 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
13568 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
13569 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
13570 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
13571 standard definition from its content.</p>
13572
13573 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
13574 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
13575 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
13576 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
13577 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
13578 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
13579 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
13580 background information about that story is available in
13581 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
13582 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
13583
13584 <blockquote>
13585 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
13586 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
13587 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
13588
13589 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
13590
13591 <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>
13592
13593 <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>
13594
13595 <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>
13596
13597 <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>
13598
13599 <p>
13600 <ul>
13601 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
13602 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
13603 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
13604 </ul>
13605 </p>
13606
13607 <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>
13608
13609 <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>
13610
13611 <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>
13612
13613 <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>
13614
13615 <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>
13616
13617
13618 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
13619 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
13620 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
13621 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
13622 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
13623 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
13624
13625 </p>
13626
13627 <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>
13628
13629 <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>
13630
13631 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
13632
13633 <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>
13634
13635 <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>
13636
13637 <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>
13638
13639 <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>
13640
13641 <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>
13642
13643 <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>
13644
13645 <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>
13646
13647 <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>
13648
13649 <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>
13650
13651 <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>
13652
13653 <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>
13654
13655 <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>
13656
13657 <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>
13658
13659 <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>
13660
13661 <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>
13662
13663 <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>
13664
13665 <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>
13666
13667 <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>
13668
13669 <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>
13670
13671 <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>
13672
13673 <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>
13674
13675 <p>On security:</p>
13676
13677 <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>
13678
13679 <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>
13680
13681 <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>
13682
13683 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
13684
13685 <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>
13686
13687 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
13688
13689 <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>
13690
13691 <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>
13692
13693 <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>
13694
13695 <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>
13696
13697 <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>
13698
13699 <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>
13700
13701 <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>
13702
13703 <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>
13704
13705 <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>
13706
13707 <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>
13708
13709 <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>
13710
13711 <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>
13712
13713 <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>
13714
13715 <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>
13716
13717 <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>
13718
13719 <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>
13720
13721 <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>
13722
13723 <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>
13724
13725 <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>
13726
13727 <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>
13728
13729 <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>
13730
13731 <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>
13732
13733 <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>
13734
13735 <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>
13736
13737 <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>
13738
13739 <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>
13740
13741 <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>
13742
13743 <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>
13744
13745 <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>
13746
13747 <p>Cordially,<br>
13748 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
13749 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
13750 </blockquote>
13751
13752       </div>
13753       <div class="tags">
13754
13755
13756         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>.
13757
13758
13759       </div>
13760     </div>
13761     <div class="padding"></div>
13762
13763     <div class="entry">
13764       <div class="title">
13765         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
13766       </div>
13767       <div class="date">
13768         25th December 2010
13769       </div>
13770       <div class="body">
13771         <p>Half a year ago I
13772 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
13773 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
13774 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
13775 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
13776
13777 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
13778 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
13779 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
13780 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
13781 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
13782 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
13783 got such a great test tool available.</p>
13784
13785       </div>
13786       <div class="tags">
13787
13788
13789         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>.
13790
13791
13792       </div>
13793     </div>
13794     <div class="padding"></div>
13795
13796     <div class="entry">
13797       <div class="title">
13798         <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>
13799       </div>
13800       <div class="date">
13801         22nd December 2010
13802       </div>
13803       <div class="body">
13804         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
13805 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
13806 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13807 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13808 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13809 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13810 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13811 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13812 university.</p>
13813
13814 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13815 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13816 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13817 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13818 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13819 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13820 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13821 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
13822
13823 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13824 I perform on a new model.</p>
13825
13826 <ul>
13827
13828 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13829 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13830 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
13831
13832 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13833 installation, X.org is working.</li>
13834
13835 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13836 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13837 reported by the program.</li>
13838
13839 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13840 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13841 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13842 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13843 normally test this by playing
13844 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13845 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
13846
13847 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13848 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13849
13850 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13851 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
13852
13853 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13854 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
13855
13856 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13857 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13858 few.</li>
13859
13860 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13861 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13862 notice this.</li>
13863
13864 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
13865 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13866 resume.</li>
13867
13868 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13869 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13870 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13871 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13872 not.</li>
13873
13874 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13875 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13876 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13877 existence.</li>
13878
13879 </ul>
13880
13881 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13882 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
13883 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13884 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13885 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13886 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13887 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13888 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
13889
13890       </div>
13891       <div class="tags">
13892
13893
13894         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>.
13895
13896
13897       </div>
13898     </div>
13899     <div class="padding"></div>
13900
13901     <div class="entry">
13902       <div class="title">
13903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
13904       </div>
13905       <div class="date">
13906         11th December 2010
13907       </div>
13908       <div class="body">
13909         <p>As I continue to explore
13910 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
13911 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13912 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
13913
13914 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13915 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13916 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13917 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13918 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13919 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13920 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13921 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
13922 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13923 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
13924 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13925 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
13926 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13927 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13928 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13929 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13930 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
13931 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13932 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13933 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
13934
13935 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13936 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13937 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13938 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13939 If the Skolelinux foundation
13940 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13941 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13942 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13943 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13944 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13945 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13946 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13947 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
13948
13949 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13950 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13951 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13952 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13953 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13954 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13955 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13956 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13957 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13958 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13959 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
13960 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13961 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13962 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13963 currencies.</p>
13964
13965 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13966 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13967 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13968 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
13969 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13970 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13971 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13972 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13973 BitCoins.  Check out
13974 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
13975 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13976 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13977 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13978 yet.</p>
13979
13980 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
13981 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13982 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13983 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13984 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
13985
13986       </div>
13987       <div class="tags">
13988
13989
13990         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>.
13991
13992
13993       </div>
13994     </div>
13995     <div class="padding"></div>
13996
13997     <div class="entry">
13998       <div class="title">
13999         <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>
14000       </div>
14001       <div class="date">
14002         10th December 2010
14003       </div>
14004       <div class="body">
14005         <p>With this weeks lawless
14006 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
14007 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
14008 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
14009 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
14010 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
14011 A blog post from
14012 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
14013 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
14014 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
14015 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
14016 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
14017 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
14018 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
14019
14020 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
14021 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
14022 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
14023 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
14024 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
14025 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
14026 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
14027 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
14028 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
14029 Debian</a> soon.</p>
14030
14031 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
14032 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
14033 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
14034 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
14035 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
14036 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
14037 you can even get
14038 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
14039 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
14040 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
14041 on the current exchange rates.</p>
14042
14043 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
14044 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
14045 donations to the address
14046 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
14047
14048       </div>
14049       <div class="tags">
14050
14051
14052         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>.
14053
14054
14055       </div>
14056     </div>
14057     <div class="padding"></div>
14058
14059     <div class="entry">
14060       <div class="title">
14061         <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>
14062       </div>
14063       <div class="date">
14064          9th December 2010
14065       </div>
14066       <div class="body">
14067         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
14068 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
14069 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
14070 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
14071 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
14072 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
14073 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
14074 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
14075 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
14076 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
14077 operational.</p>
14078
14079 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
14080 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
14081 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
14082 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
14083 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
14084 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
14085 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
14086
14087       </div>
14088       <div class="tags">
14089
14090
14091         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>.
14092
14093
14094       </div>
14095     </div>
14096     <div class="padding"></div>
14097
14098     <div class="entry">
14099       <div class="title">
14100         <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>
14101       </div>
14102       <div class="date">
14103         29th November 2010
14104       </div>
14105       <div class="body">
14106         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14107 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
14108 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
14109 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
14110 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
14111 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
14112
14113 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
14114 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
14115 will hold its
14116 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
14117 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
14118 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
14119 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
14120 vote this year.</p>
14121
14122       </div>
14123       <div class="tags">
14124
14125
14126         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>.
14127
14128
14129       </div>
14130     </div>
14131     <div class="padding"></div>
14132
14133     <div class="entry">
14134       <div class="title">
14135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
14136       </div>
14137       <div class="date">
14138         27th November 2010
14139       </div>
14140       <div class="body">
14141         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
14142 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
14143 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
14144 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
14145 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
14146 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
14147 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
14148 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
14149
14150 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
14151 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14152 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
14153 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
14154 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
14155 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
14156 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
14157 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
14158 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
14159 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
14160 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
14161
14162 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
14163 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
14164 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
14165 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
14166 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
14167 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
14168 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
14169 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
14170 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
14171 what is going on.</p>
14172
14173       </div>
14174       <div class="tags">
14175
14176
14177         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>.
14178
14179
14180       </div>
14181     </div>
14182     <div class="padding"></div>
14183
14184     <div class="entry">
14185       <div class="title">
14186         <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>
14187       </div>
14188       <div class="date">
14189         22nd November 2010
14190       </div>
14191       <div class="body">
14192         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
14193 upgrade testing of the
14194 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14195 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
14196 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
14197 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
14198
14199 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14200
14201 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14202
14203 <blockquote><p>
14204   apache2.2-bin
14205   aptdaemon
14206   baobab
14207   binfmt-support
14208   browser-plugin-gnash
14209   cheese-common
14210   cli-common
14211   cups-pk-helper
14212   dmz-cursor-theme
14213   empathy
14214   empathy-common
14215   freedesktop-sound-theme
14216   freeglut3
14217   gconf-defaults-service
14218   gdm-themes
14219   gedit-plugins
14220   geoclue
14221   geoclue-hostip
14222   geoclue-localnet
14223   geoclue-manual
14224   geoclue-yahoo
14225   gnash
14226   gnash-common
14227   gnome
14228   gnome-backgrounds
14229   gnome-cards-data
14230   gnome-codec-install
14231   gnome-core
14232   gnome-desktop-environment
14233   gnome-disk-utility
14234   gnome-screenshot
14235   gnome-search-tool
14236   gnome-session-canberra
14237   gnome-system-log
14238   gnome-themes-extras
14239   gnome-themes-more
14240   gnome-user-share
14241   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14242   gstreamer0.10-tools
14243   gtk2-engines
14244   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14245   gtk2-engines-smooth
14246   hamster-applet
14247   libapache2-mod-dnssd
14248   libapr1
14249   libaprutil1
14250   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
14251   libaprutil1-ldap
14252   libart2.0-cil
14253   libboost-date-time1.42.0
14254   libboost-python1.42.0
14255   libboost-thread1.42.0
14256   libchamplain-0.4-0
14257   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
14258   libcheese-gtk18
14259   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14260   libcryptui0
14261   libdiscid0
14262   libelf1
14263   libepc-1.0-2
14264   libepc-common
14265   libepc-ui-1.0-2
14266   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14267   libfreerdp0
14268   libgconf2.0-cil
14269   libgdata-common
14270   libgdata7
14271   libgdu-gtk0
14272   libgee2
14273   libgeoclue0
14274   libgexiv2-0
14275   libgif4
14276   libglade2.0-cil
14277   libglib2.0-cil
14278   libgmime2.4-cil
14279   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14280   libgnome2.24-cil
14281   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
14282   libgpod-common
14283   libgpod4
14284   libgtk2.0-cil
14285   libgtkglext1
14286   libgtksourceview2.0-common
14287   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14288   libmono-addins0.2-cil
14289   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
14290   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14291   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
14292   libmono-posix2.0-cil
14293   libmono-security2.0-cil
14294   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14295   libmono-system2.0-cil
14296   libmtp8
14297   libmusicbrainz3-6
14298   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
14299   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
14300   libopal3.6.8
14301   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
14302   libpt2.6.7
14303   libpython2.6
14304   librpm1
14305   librpmio1
14306   libsdl1.2debian
14307   libsrtp0
14308   libssh-4
14309   libtelepathy-farsight0
14310   libtelepathy-glib0
14311   libtidy-0.99-0
14312   media-player-info
14313   mesa-utils
14314   mono-2.0-gac
14315   mono-gac
14316   mono-runtime
14317   nautilus-sendto
14318   nautilus-sendto-empathy
14319   p7zip-full
14320   pkg-config
14321   python-aptdaemon
14322   python-aptdaemon-gtk
14323   python-axiom
14324   python-beautifulsoup
14325   python-bugbuddy
14326   python-clientform
14327   python-coherence
14328   python-configobj
14329   python-crypto
14330   python-cupshelpers
14331   python-elementtree
14332   python-epsilon
14333   python-evolution
14334   python-feedparser
14335   python-gdata
14336   python-gdbm
14337   python-gst0.10
14338   python-gtkglext1
14339   python-gtksourceview2
14340   python-httplib2
14341   python-louie
14342   python-mako
14343   python-markupsafe
14344   python-mechanize
14345   python-nevow
14346   python-notify
14347   python-opengl
14348   python-openssl
14349   python-pam
14350   python-pkg-resources
14351   python-pyasn1
14352   python-pysqlite2
14353   python-rdflib
14354   python-serial
14355   python-tagpy
14356   python-twisted-bin
14357   python-twisted-conch
14358   python-twisted-core
14359   python-twisted-web
14360   python-utidylib
14361   python-webkit
14362   python-xdg
14363   python-zope.interface
14364   remmina
14365   remmina-plugin-data
14366   remmina-plugin-rdp
14367   remmina-plugin-vnc
14368   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14369   rhythmbox-plugins
14370   rpm-common
14371   rpm2cpio
14372   seahorse-plugins
14373   shotwell
14374   software-center
14375   system-config-printer-udev
14376   telepathy-gabble
14377   telepathy-mission-control-5
14378   telepathy-salut
14379   tomboy
14380   totem
14381   totem-coherence
14382   totem-mozilla
14383   totem-plugins
14384   transmission-common
14385   xdg-user-dirs
14386   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
14387   xserver-xephyr
14388 </p></blockquote>
14389
14390 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14391
14392 <blockquote><p>
14393   cheese
14394   ekiga
14395   eog
14396   epiphany-extensions
14397   evolution-exchange
14398   fast-user-switch-applet
14399   file-roller
14400   gcalctool
14401   gconf-editor
14402   gdm
14403   gedit
14404   gedit-common
14405   gnome-games
14406   gnome-games-data
14407   gnome-nettool
14408   gnome-system-tools
14409   gnome-themes
14410   gnuchess
14411   gucharmap
14412   guile-1.8-libs
14413   libavahi-ui0
14414   libdmx1
14415   libgalago3
14416   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14417   libgtksourceview2.0-0
14418   liblircclient0
14419   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
14420   libspeexdsp1
14421   libsvga1
14422   rhythmbox
14423   seahorse
14424   sound-juicer
14425   system-config-printer
14426   totem-common
14427   transmission-gtk
14428   vinagre
14429   vino
14430 </p></blockquote>
14431
14432 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14433
14434 <blockquote><p>
14435   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14436 </p></blockquote>
14437
14438 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14439
14440 <blockquote><p>
14441 [nothing]
14442 </p></blockquote>
14443
14444 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14445
14446 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14447
14448 <blockquote><p>
14449   ksmserver
14450 </p></blockquote>
14451
14452 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14453
14454 <blockquote><p>
14455   kwin
14456   network-manager-kde
14457 </p></blockquote>
14458
14459 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14460
14461 <blockquote><p>
14462   arts
14463   dolphin
14464   freespacenotifier
14465   google-gadgets-gst
14466   google-gadgets-xul
14467   kappfinder
14468   kcalc
14469   kcharselect
14470   kde-core
14471   kde-plasma-desktop
14472   kde-standard
14473   kde-window-manager
14474   kdeartwork
14475   kdeartwork-emoticons
14476   kdeartwork-style
14477   kdeartwork-theme-icon
14478   kdebase
14479   kdebase-apps
14480   kdebase-workspace
14481   kdebase-workspace-bin
14482   kdebase-workspace-data
14483   kdeeject
14484   kdelibs
14485   kdeplasma-addons
14486   kdeutils
14487   kdewallpapers
14488   kdf
14489   kfloppy
14490   kgpg
14491   khelpcenter4
14492   kinfocenter
14493   konq-plugins-l10n
14494   konqueror-nsplugins
14495   kscreensaver
14496   kscreensaver-xsavers
14497   ktimer
14498   kwrite
14499   libgle3
14500   libkde4-ruby1.8
14501   libkonq5
14502   libkonq5-templates
14503   libnetpbm10
14504   libplasma-ruby
14505   libplasma-ruby1.8
14506   libqt4-ruby1.8
14507   marble-data
14508   marble-plugins
14509   netpbm
14510   nuvola-icon-theme
14511   plasma-dataengines-workspace
14512   plasma-desktop
14513   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14514   plasma-runners-addons
14515   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14516   plasma-scriptengine-python
14517   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14518   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14519   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14520   plasma-scriptengines
14521   plasma-wallpapers-addons
14522   plasma-widget-folderview
14523   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14524   ruby
14525   sweeper
14526   update-notifier-kde
14527   xscreensaver-data-extra
14528   xscreensaver-gl
14529   xscreensaver-gl-extra
14530   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14531 </p></blockquote>
14532
14533 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14534
14535 <blockquote><p>
14536   ark
14537   google-gadgets-common
14538   google-gadgets-qt
14539   htdig
14540   kate
14541   kdebase-bin
14542   kdebase-data
14543   kdepasswd
14544   kfind
14545   klipper
14546   konq-plugins
14547   konqueror
14548   ksysguard
14549   ksysguardd
14550   libarchive1
14551   libcln6
14552   libeet1
14553   libeina-svn-06
14554   libggadget-1.0-0b
14555   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
14556   libgps19
14557   libkdecorations4
14558   libkephal4
14559   libkonq4
14560   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14561   libkscreensaver5
14562   libksgrd4
14563   libksignalplotter4
14564   libkunitconversion4
14565   libkwineffects1a
14566   libmarblewidget4
14567   libntrack-qt4-1
14568   libntrack0
14569   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14570   libplasmaclock4a
14571   libplasmagenericshell4
14572   libprocesscore4a
14573   libprocessui4a
14574   libqalculate5
14575   libqedje0a
14576   libqtruby4shared2
14577   libqzion0a
14578   libruby1.8
14579   libscim8c2a
14580   libsmokekdecore4-3
14581   libsmokekdeui4-3
14582   libsmokekfile3
14583   libsmokekhtml3
14584   libsmokekio3
14585   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
14586   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
14587   libsmokekparts3
14588   libsmokektexteditor3
14589   libsmokekutils3
14590   libsmokenepomuk3
14591   libsmokephonon3
14592   libsmokeplasma3
14593   libsmokeqtcore4-3
14594   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
14595   libsmokeqtgui4-3
14596   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
14597   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
14598   libsmokeqtscript4-3
14599   libsmokeqtsql4-3
14600   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
14601   libsmokeqttest4-3
14602   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
14603   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
14604   libsmokeqtxml4-3
14605   libsmokesolid3
14606   libsmokesoprano3
14607   libtaskmanager4a
14608   libtidy-0.99-0
14609   libweather-ion4a
14610   libxklavier16
14611   libxxf86misc1
14612   okteta
14613   oxygencursors
14614   plasma-dataengines-addons
14615   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
14616   plasma-widget-lancelot
14617   plasma-widgets-addons
14618   plasma-widgets-workspace
14619   polkit-kde-1
14620   ruby1.8
14621   systemsettings
14622   update-notifier-common
14623 </p></blockquote>
14624
14625 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
14626 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
14627 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
14628 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
14629
14630       </div>
14631       <div class="tags">
14632
14633
14634         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>.
14635
14636
14637       </div>
14638     </div>
14639     <div class="padding"></div>
14640
14641     <div class="entry">
14642       <div class="title">
14643         <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>
14644       </div>
14645       <div class="date">
14646         22nd November 2010
14647       </div>
14648       <div class="body">
14649         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
14650 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
14651 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
14652 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
14653 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
14654 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
14655 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
14656 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
14657 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
14658
14659 <p>I found
14660 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
14661 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
14662 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
14663 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
14664 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
14665 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
14666
14667 <pre>
14668 #!/bin/sh
14669
14670 # Based on
14671 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14672
14673 set -e
14674 set -x
14675
14676 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
14677     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
14678     exit 1
14679 else
14680     host="$1"
14681 fi
14682
14683 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14684     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
14685     exit 1
14686 fi
14687
14688 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
14689 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14690 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
14691 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14692
14693 img=$host.img
14694 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14695 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14696
14697 parted $img mklabel msdos
14698 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
14699 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14700 parted $img set 1 boot on
14701
14702 modprobe dm-mod
14703 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14704 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14705
14706 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
14707 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14708 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14709
14710 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14711 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14712 </pre>
14713
14714 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14715 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
14716
14717 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14718 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
14719 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
14720 seem to work just fine.</p>
14721
14722       </div>
14723       <div class="tags">
14724
14725
14726         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>.
14727
14728
14729       </div>
14730     </div>
14731     <div class="padding"></div>
14732
14733     <div class="entry">
14734       <div class="title">
14735         <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>
14736       </div>
14737       <div class="date">
14738         20th November 2010
14739       </div>
14740       <div class="body">
14741         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14742 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14743 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14744 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
14745
14746 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14747 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14748 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
14749
14750 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
14751
14752 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14753
14754 <blockquote><p>
14755   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14756   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14757   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14758   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14759   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14760   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14761   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14762   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14763   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14764   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14765   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14766   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14767   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14768   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14769   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14770   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14771   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14772   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14773   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14774   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14775   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14776   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14777   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14778   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14779   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14780   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14781   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14782   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14783   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14784   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14785   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14786   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14787   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14788   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14789   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14790   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14791   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14792   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14793   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14794   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14795   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14796   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14797   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14798   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14799   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14800   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14801   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14802   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14803   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14804   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14805   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14806   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14807   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14808   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14809   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14810   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14811   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14812   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14813   zip
14814 </p></blockquote>
14815
14816 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14817
14818 <blockquote><p>
14819   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14820   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14821   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14822   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14823   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14824   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14825   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14826   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14827   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14828   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14829   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14830   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14831   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14832   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14833   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14834   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14835   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14836   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14837   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14838   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14839   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14840   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14841   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14842   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14843   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14844   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14845   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14846   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14847   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14848 </p></blockquote>
14849
14850 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14851
14852 <blockquote><p>
14853   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14854 </p></blockquote>
14855
14856 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14857
14858 <blockquote><p>
14859 [nothing]
14860 </p></blockquote>
14861
14862 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
14863
14864 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14865
14866 <blockquote><p>
14867   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14868   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14869   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14870   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14871   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14872   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14873   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14874   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14875   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14876   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14877   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14878   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14879   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14880   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14881   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14882   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14883   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14884   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14885   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14886   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14887   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14888   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14889   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14890   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14891   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14892   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14893   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14894   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14895   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14896   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14897 </p></blockquote>
14898
14899 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14900
14901 <blockquote><p>
14902   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14903   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14904   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14905   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14906   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14907   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14908   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14909   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14910   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14911   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14912   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14913   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14914   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14915   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14916   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14917   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14918   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14919   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14920   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14921   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14922   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14923   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14924   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14925   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14926   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14927   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14928   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14929   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14930   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14931   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14932   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14933   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14934   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14935 </p></blockquote>
14936
14937 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14938
14939 <blockquote><p>
14940   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14941   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14942   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14943   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14944   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14945   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14946   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14947 </p></blockquote>
14948
14949 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14950
14951 <blockquote><p>
14952   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14953 </p></blockquote>
14954
14955       </div>
14956       <div class="tags">
14957
14958
14959         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>.
14960
14961
14962       </div>
14963     </div>
14964     <div class="padding"></div>
14965
14966     <div class="entry">
14967       <div class="title">
14968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
14969       </div>
14970       <div class="date">
14971         20th November 2010
14972       </div>
14973       <div class="body">
14974         <p>Answering
14975 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14976 call from the Gnash project</a> for
14977 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
14978 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14979 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14980 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14981 releases out more often.</p>
14982
14983 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14984 I have considered setting up a <a
14985 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
14986 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14987 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14988 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14989 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14990 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14991 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14992 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14993 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14994 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14995 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14996 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
14997
14998       </div>
14999       <div class="tags">
15000
15001
15002         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>.
15003
15004
15005       </div>
15006     </div>
15007     <div class="padding"></div>
15008
15009     <div class="entry">
15010       <div class="title">
15011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
15012       </div>
15013       <div class="date">
15014          9th November 2010
15015       </div>
15016       <div class="body">
15017         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
15018
15019 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
15020 3D linked in from
15021 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
15022 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
15023
15024       </div>
15025       <div class="tags">
15026
15027
15028         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>.
15029
15030
15031       </div>
15032     </div>
15033     <div class="padding"></div>
15034
15035     <div class="entry">
15036       <div class="title">
15037         <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>
15038       </div>
15039       <div class="date">
15040          7th November 2010
15041       </div>
15042       <div class="body">
15043         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
15044 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
15045 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
15046 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
15047 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
15048 working using this DVD.</p>
15049
15050 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
15051 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
15052 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
15053 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
15054 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
15055 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
15056 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
15057
15058 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
15059 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
15060 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
15061 Debian archive.</p>
15062
15063 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
15064 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
15065 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
15066 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
15067 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
15068 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
15069 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
15070 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
15071 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
15072 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
15073 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
15074 free X driver should work.</p>
15075
15076 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
15077 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
15078 DVD more useful again.</p>
15079
15080       </div>
15081       <div class="tags">
15082
15083
15084         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>.
15085
15086
15087       </div>
15088     </div>
15089     <div class="padding"></div>
15090
15091     <div class="entry">
15092       <div class="title">
15093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
15094       </div>
15095       <div class="date">
15096         24th October 2010
15097       </div>
15098       <div class="body">
15099         <p>Some updates.</p>
15100
15101 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
15102 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
15103 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
15104 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
15105 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
15106 :)</p>
15107
15108 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
15109 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
15110 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
15111 It is called
15112 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
15113 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
15114 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
15115 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
15116 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
15117 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
15118
15119 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
15120 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
15121 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
15122 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
15123 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
15124 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
15125 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
15126 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
15127 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
15128 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
15129
15130       </div>
15131       <div class="tags">
15132
15133
15134         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>.
15135
15136
15137       </div>
15138     </div>
15139     <div class="padding"></div>
15140
15141     <div class="entry">
15142       <div class="title">
15143         <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>
15144       </div>
15145       <div class="date">
15146         19th October 2010
15147       </div>
15148       <div class="body">
15149         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
15150 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
15151 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
15152 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
15153 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
15154 AVM2 flash files.</p>
15155
15156 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
15157 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
15158 following text:</P>
15159
15160 <p><blockquote>
15161
15162   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
15163   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
15164
15165   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
15166
15167   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
15168
15169   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
15170   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
15171   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
15172   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
15173   days. The project web page is available from
15174   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
15175   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
15176   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
15177
15178   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
15179   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
15180   to get this to happen.</p>
15181
15182   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
15183   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
15184
15185 </blockquote></p>
15186
15187 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
15188 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
15189 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
15190 :)</p>
15191
15192       </div>
15193       <div class="tags">
15194
15195
15196         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>.
15197
15198
15199       </div>
15200     </div>
15201     <div class="padding"></div>
15202
15203     <div class="entry">
15204       <div class="title">
15205         <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>
15206       </div>
15207       <div class="date">
15208          9th October 2010
15209       </div>
15210       <div class="body">
15211         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
15212 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
15213 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
15214 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
15215 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
15216 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
15217 robots.</p>
15218
15219 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
15220 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
15221 a few less important features too.</p>
15222
15223 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
15224 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
15225 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
15226 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
15227
15228 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
15229 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
15230 source or binary package:</p>
15231
15232 <p><ul>
15233 <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>
15234 <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>
15235 <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>
15236 </ul></p>
15237
15238 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
15239 please let me know.</p>
15240
15241       </div>
15242       <div class="tags">
15243
15244
15245         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>.
15246
15247
15248       </div>
15249     </div>
15250     <div class="padding"></div>
15251
15252     <div class="entry">
15253       <div class="title">
15254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
15255       </div>
15256       <div class="date">
15257          3rd October 2010
15258       </div>
15259       <div class="body">
15260         <p><ul>
15261
15262 <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
15263 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
15264
15265 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
15266 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
15267 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
15268
15269 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
15270 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
15271 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
15272 simple setup.
15273
15274 </ul></p>
15275
15276       </div>
15277       <div class="tags">
15278
15279
15280         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>.
15281
15282
15283       </div>
15284     </div>
15285     <div class="padding"></div>
15286
15287     <div class="entry">
15288       <div class="title">
15289         <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>
15290       </div>
15291       <div class="date">
15292          9th September 2010
15293       </div>
15294       <div class="body">
15295         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
15296 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
15297 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
15298 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
15299 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
15300 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
15301 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
15302 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
15303 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
15304
15305 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
15306 written:</p>
15307
15308 <blockquote>
15309 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
15310 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
15311 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
15312 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
15313 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
15314
15315 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
15316 standard.</p>
15317 </blockquote>
15318
15319 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
15320 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
15321 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
15322 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
15323
15324 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
15325 read
15326 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
15327 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
15328 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
15329 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
15330 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
15331 the issue.  The solution is to support the
15332 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
15333 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
15334 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
15335
15336       </div>
15337       <div class="tags">
15338
15339
15340         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>.
15341
15342
15343       </div>
15344     </div>
15345     <div class="padding"></div>
15346
15347     <div class="entry">
15348       <div class="title">
15349         <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>
15350       </div>
15351       <div class="date">
15352          4th September 2010
15353       </div>
15354       <div class="body">
15355         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
15356 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
15357 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
15358 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
15359 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
15360 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
15361 installed.</p>
15362
15363 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
15364 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
15365 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
15366 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
15367 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15368 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
15369 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
15370 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
15371 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
15372
15373 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
15374 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
15375 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
15376 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
15377 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
15378 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
15379 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
15380 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
15381 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
15382 pages they want to visit.</p>
15383
15384 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
15385 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
15386 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
15387 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
15388 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
15389 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
15390 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
15391 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
15392 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
15393 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
15394 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
15395
15396       </div>
15397       <div class="tags">
15398
15399
15400         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>.
15401
15402
15403       </div>
15404     </div>
15405     <div class="padding"></div>
15406
15407     <div class="entry">
15408       <div class="title">
15409         <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>
15410       </div>
15411       <div class="date">
15412          1st September 2010
15413       </div>
15414       <div class="body">
15415         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
15416 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
15417 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
15418 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
15419 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
15420 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
15421 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
15422 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
15423 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
15424 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
15425 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
15426 drive around.</p>
15427
15428 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
15429 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
15430
15431 <p><pre>
15432 use Spykee;
15433 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
15434 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
15435 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
15436 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
15437 $spykee->left();
15438 sleep 2;
15439 $spykee->right();
15440 sleep 2;
15441 $spykee->forward();
15442 sleep 2;
15443 $spykee->back();
15444 sleep 2;
15445 $spykee->stop();
15446 </pre></p>
15447
15448 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
15449 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
15450 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
15451 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
15452 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
15453 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
15454 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
15455 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
15456 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
15457 going. :).</p>
15458
15459 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
15460 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
15461 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
15462 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
15463
15464       </div>
15465       <div class="tags">
15466
15467
15468         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>.
15469
15470
15471       </div>
15472     </div>
15473     <div class="padding"></div>
15474
15475     <div class="entry">
15476       <div class="title">
15477         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
15478       </div>
15479       <div class="date">
15480         30th August 2010
15481       </div>
15482       <div class="body">
15483         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
15484 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
15485 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
15486 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
15487 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
15488 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
15489 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
15490
15491 <pre>
15492 % ln foo bar
15493 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
15494 %
15495 </pre>
15496
15497 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
15498 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
15499 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
15500 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
15501 nevertheless. :)</p>
15502
15503 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
15504 git from
15505 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
15506
15507       </div>
15508       <div class="tags">
15509
15510
15511         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>.
15512
15513
15514       </div>
15515     </div>
15516     <div class="padding"></div>
15517
15518     <div class="entry">
15519       <div class="title">
15520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
15521       </div>
15522       <div class="date">
15523         26th August 2010
15524       </div>
15525       <div class="body">
15526         <p>My file system sematics program
15527 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
15528 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
15529 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
15530 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
15531 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
15532 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
15533 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
15534 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
15535 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
15536 script:</p>
15537
15538 <pre>
15539 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
15540   mode_t retval = 0;
15541   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
15542   if (-1 != fd) {
15543     unlink(name);
15544     struct stat statbuf;
15545     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
15546       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
15547     }
15548     close(fd);
15549   }
15550   return retval;
15551 }
15552
15553 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
15554 int test_umask(void) {
15555   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
15556
15557   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
15558   mode_t newmode;
15559   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15560     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
15561            newmode);
15562   }
15563   umask(007);
15564   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
15565     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
15566            newmode);
15567   }
15568
15569   umask (orig_umask);
15570   return 0;
15571 }
15572
15573 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15574   [...]
15575   test_umask();
15576   return 0;
15577 }
15578 </pre>
15579
15580 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
15581
15582 <pre>
15583 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15584 info: testing symlink creation
15585 info: testing subdirectory creation
15586 info: testing fcntl locking
15587   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15588   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15589   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15590   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15591   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15592   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15593 info: testing umask effect on file creation
15594 </pre>
15595
15596 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
15597 result:</p>
15598
15599 <pre>
15600 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15601 info: testing symlink creation
15602 info: testing subdirectory creation
15603 info: testing fcntl locking
15604   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15605   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15606   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15607   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15608   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15609   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15610 info: testing umask effect on file creation
15611   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
15612   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
15613 </pre>
15614
15615 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
15616 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
15617 directory.</p>
15618
15619 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
15620 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
15621
15622 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15623 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15624 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
15625
15626       </div>
15627       <div class="tags">
15628
15629
15630         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>.
15631
15632
15633       </div>
15634     </div>
15635     <div class="padding"></div>
15636
15637     <div class="entry">
15638       <div class="title">
15639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
15640       </div>
15641       <div class="date">
15642         15th August 2010
15643       </div>
15644       <div class="body">
15645         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
15646 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
15647 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
15648 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
15649 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
15650 long time.</p>
15651
15652       </div>
15653       <div class="tags">
15654
15655
15656         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>.
15657
15658
15659       </div>
15660     </div>
15661     <div class="padding"></div>
15662
15663     <div class="entry">
15664       <div class="title">
15665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
15666       </div>
15667       <div class="date">
15668          9th August 2010
15669       </div>
15670       <div class="body">
15671         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
15672 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
15673 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
15674 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
15675 generated configuration.</p>
15676
15677 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
15678 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
15679 without any manual configuration.</p>
15680
15681 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
15682 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
15683 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
15684 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
15685 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
15686 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
15687 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
15688 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
15689 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
15690 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
15691 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
15692 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
15693 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
15694 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
15695 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
15696 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
15697 use.</p>
15698
15699 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
15700 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
15701 working properly out of the box:</p>
15702
15703 <ul>
15704 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
15705 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
15706 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
15707 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
15708 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
15709 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
15710 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
15711 </ul>
15712
15713 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
15714
15715 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
15716 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
15717 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
15718 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
15719 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
15720
15721 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
15722 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
15723 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
15724 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
15725 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
15726 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
15727 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
15728 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
15729
15730 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
15731 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
15732 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
15733 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
15734 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
15735 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
15736 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
15737 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
15738 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
15739 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
15740 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
15741 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15742 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
15743 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
15744 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
15745 current DNS domain is used.</p>
15746
15747 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
15748 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
15749 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
15750 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
15751 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
15752 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
15753 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
15754 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
15755 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
15756 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
15757 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
15758 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
15759 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
15760
15761 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
15762 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
15763 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
15764 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
15765 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
15766 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
15767 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
15768 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
15769 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
15770 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
15771 do for now. :)</p>
15772
15773 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
15774 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
15775 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
15776 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
15777 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
15778 yet.</p>
15779
15780 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15781 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15782
15783 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
15784 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
15785 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
15786 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
15787
15788       </div>
15789       <div class="tags">
15790
15791
15792         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>.
15793
15794
15795       </div>
15796     </div>
15797     <div class="padding"></div>
15798
15799     <div class="entry">
15800       <div class="title">
15801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
15802       </div>
15803       <div class="date">
15804          8th August 2010
15805       </div>
15806       <div class="body">
15807         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15808 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15809 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15810 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15811 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15812 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15813 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
15814
15815 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15816 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15817 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15818 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15819 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15820 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15821 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
15822
15823 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15824 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15825 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15826 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15827 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
15828
15829 <pre>
15830 /*
15831  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15832  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15833  * directory.
15834  * License: GPL v2 or later
15835  *
15836  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15837  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15838 */
15839
15840 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15841 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15842 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15843
15844 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15845
15846 #include &lt;errno.h>
15847 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
15848 #include &lt;stdio.h>
15849 #include &lt;string.h>
15850 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
15851 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
15852 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
15853 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
15854 #include &lt;unistd.h>
15855
15856 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15857 /*
15858  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15859  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15860  * below.
15861  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
15862  */
15863 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
15864 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15865   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
15866 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15867   char *zErrMsg;
15868   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15869   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15870   unlink(name);
15871   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
15872   if( rc ){
15873     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15874     sqlite3_close(db);
15875     return -1;
15876   }
15877
15878   /* create tables */
15879   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
15880   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15881     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
15882     sqlite3_close(db);
15883     return -1;
15884   }
15885   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
15886   sqlite3_close(db);
15887   return 0;
15888 }
15889 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15890
15891 /*
15892  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15893  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15894  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15895  * See also
15896  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
15897  * POSIX specification
15898  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
15899  */
15900 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15901   struct flock fl;
15902   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
15903   unlink(name);
15904   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15905   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
15906
15907   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15908   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15909   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15910   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15911   fl.l_len    = 1;
15912   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15913   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15914
15915   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15916   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15917   fl.l_len    = 510;
15918   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15919   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15920
15921   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15922   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15923   fl.l_len    = 1;
15924   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15925   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15926
15927   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
15928   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15929   fl.l_len    = 1;
15930   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15931   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15932
15933   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
15934   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15935   fl.l_len    = 510;
15936   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15937
15938   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
15939   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15940   fl.l_len    = 2;
15941   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15942   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
15943
15944   close(fd);
15945   return 0;
15946 }
15947
15948 /*
15949  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15950  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15951  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
15952  * slowing down file operations.
15953  */
15954 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15955 #define LEVELS 5
15956   char *path = strdup("test");
15957   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15958   int level;
15959   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
15960   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15961     char *newpath = NULL;
15962     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15963       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
15964              path, strerror(errno));
15965       break;
15966     }
15967     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
15968     free(path);
15969     path = newpath;
15970   }
15971   return 0;
15972 }
15973
15974 /*
15975  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15976  * KDE.
15977  */
15978 int test_symlinks(void) {
15979   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
15980   unlink("symlink");
15981   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
15982     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
15983   return 0;
15984 }
15985
15986 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15987   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
15988   test_symlinks();
15989   test_subdirectory_creation();
15990 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15991   test_sqlite_open();
15992 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15993   test_gcompris_locking();
15994   return 0;
15995 }
15996 </pre>
15997
15998 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
15999 this:</p>
16000
16001 <pre>
16002 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16003 info: testing symlink creation
16004 info: testing subdirectory creation
16005 info: sqlite worked
16006 info: testing fcntl locking
16007   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16008   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16009   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16010   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16011   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16012   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16013 </pre>
16014
16015 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
16016 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
16017 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
16018 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
16019 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
16020 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
16021 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
16022 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
16023
16024 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
16025 it. :)</p>
16026
16027 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16028 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16029 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16030
16031       </div>
16032       <div class="tags">
16033
16034
16035         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>.
16036
16037
16038       </div>
16039     </div>
16040     <div class="padding"></div>
16041
16042     <div class="entry">
16043       <div class="title">
16044         <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>
16045       </div>
16046       <div class="date">
16047          7th August 2010
16048       </div>
16049       <div class="body">
16050         <p>A few days ago, I
16051 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
16052 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
16053 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
16054 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
16055 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
16056 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
16057 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
16058 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
16059 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
16060
16061 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
16062 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
16063 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
16064 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
16065 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
16066 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
16067 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
16068 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
16069 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
16070 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
16071 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
16072 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
16073 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
16074 gave it a IP address.</p>
16075
16076 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
16077 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
16078 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
16079 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
16080 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
16081 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
16082 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
16083 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
16084
16085 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
16086 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
16087 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
16088 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
16089 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
16090 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
16091
16092 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
16093 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
16094 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
16095 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
16096 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
16097 with UID and GID values.</p>
16098
16099 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
16100 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16101
16102       </div>
16103       <div class="tags">
16104
16105
16106         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>.
16107
16108
16109       </div>
16110     </div>
16111     <div class="padding"></div>
16112
16113     <div class="entry">
16114       <div class="title">
16115         <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>
16116       </div>
16117       <div class="date">
16118          3rd August 2010
16119       </div>
16120       <div class="body">
16121         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
16122 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
16123 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
16124 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
16125 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
16126 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
16127 servers.</p>
16128
16129 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
16130 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
16131 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
16132 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
16133 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
16134 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
16135 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
16136 .uio.no.</p>
16137
16138 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
16139 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
16140 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
16141 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
16142 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
16143 university servers.</p>
16144
16145 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
16146 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
16147 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
16148 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
16149 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
16150 uses.</p>
16151
16152       </div>
16153       <div class="tags">
16154
16155
16156         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>.
16157
16158
16159       </div>
16160     </div>
16161     <div class="padding"></div>
16162
16163     <div class="entry">
16164       <div class="title">
16165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
16166       </div>
16167       <div class="date">
16168         27th July 2010
16169       </div>
16170       <div class="body">
16171         <p>I discovered this while doing
16172 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
16173 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
16174 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
16175 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
16176 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
16177
16178 <p>An example is from todays
16179 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
16180 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
16181 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
16182 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
16183 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
16184 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
16185 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
16186
16187 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
16188
16189 <blockquote><pre>
16190 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
16191  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
16192   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
16193 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
16194  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
16195 </pre></blockquote>
16196
16197 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
16198 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
16199 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
16200 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
16201 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
16202 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
16203 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
16204 of dependency loops.</p>
16205
16206 <p>Thanks to
16207 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
16208 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
16209 dependencies
16210 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
16211 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
16212
16213 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
16214 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
16215 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
16216 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
16217 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
16218 it.</p>
16219
16220       </div>
16221       <div class="tags">
16222
16223
16224         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>.
16225
16226
16227       </div>
16228     </div>
16229     <div class="padding"></div>
16230
16231     <div class="entry">
16232       <div class="title">
16233         <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>
16234       </div>
16235       <div class="date">
16236         27th July 2010
16237       </div>
16238       <div class="body">
16239         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
16240 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
16241 completed.</p>
16242
16243 <blockquote>
16244 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
16245 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
16246 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
16247 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
16248 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
16249 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
16250 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
16251 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
16252
16253 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
16254 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
16255 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
16256
16257 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
16258 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
16259 much.</p>
16260
16261 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
16262
16263 <ul>
16264 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
16265 <ul>
16266   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
16267          combination with some new artwork
16268   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
16269   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
16270   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
16271   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
16272   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
16273   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
16274   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
16275   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
16276   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
16277 </ul></li>
16278 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
16279     Enabled for:
16280 <ul>
16281   <li>PAM
16282   <li>LDAP
16283   <li>IMAP
16284   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
16285 </ul>
16286 </li>
16287 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
16288 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
16289     fetched from LDAP.</li>
16290 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
16291 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
16292 </ul>
16293 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
16294
16295 <ul>
16296 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
16297     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
16298     for testing.</li>
16299 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
16300     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
16301     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
16302 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
16303 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
16304 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
16305 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
16306     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
16307 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
16308     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
16309     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
16310 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
16311     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
16312     and help out with translations.</li>
16313 </ul>
16314
16315 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
16316
16317 <ul>
16318 <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>
16319 <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>
16320 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16321 </ul>
16322 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
16323
16324 <ul>
16325 <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>
16326 <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>
16327 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16328 </ul>
16329
16330 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
16331 get closer to the final release.</p>
16332
16333 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
16334
16335 <ul>
16336 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16337 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16338 </ul>
16339
16340 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
16341 <ul>
16342 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
16343 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
16344 </ul>
16345 <p>How to report bugs:
16346 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
16347
16348 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
16349 </blockquote>
16350
16351       </div>
16352       <div class="tags">
16353
16354
16355         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>.
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/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
16365       </div>
16366       <div class="date">
16367         25th July 2010
16368       </div>
16369       <div class="body">
16370         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
16371 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
16372 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
16373 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
16374 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
16375
16376 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
16377 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
16378 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
16379 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
16380 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
16381 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
16382 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
16383
16384 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
16385 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
16386 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
16387 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
16388 up. :)</p>
16389
16390 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
16391 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
16392 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
16393
16394 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
16395 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
16396 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
16397 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
16398 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
16399 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
16400 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
16401 release another day.</p>
16402
16403 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
16404 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16405
16406       </div>
16407       <div class="tags">
16408
16409
16410         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>.
16411
16412
16413       </div>
16414     </div>
16415     <div class="padding"></div>
16416
16417     <div class="entry">
16418       <div class="title">
16419         <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>
16420       </div>
16421       <div class="date">
16422         18th July 2010
16423       </div>
16424       <div class="body">
16425         <p>Thanks to
16426 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
16427 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
16428 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
16429 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
16430 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
16431 only available from the development server, until more experience is
16432 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
16433
16434 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
16435 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
16436 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
16437 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
16438 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
16439 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
16440 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
16441
16442       </div>
16443       <div class="tags">
16444
16445
16446         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>.
16447
16448
16449       </div>
16450     </div>
16451     <div class="padding"></div>
16452
16453     <div class="entry">
16454       <div class="title">
16455         <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>
16456       </div>
16457       <div class="date">
16458         17th July 2010
16459       </div>
16460       <div class="body">
16461         <p>This is a
16462 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
16463 on my
16464 <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
16465 work</a> on
16466 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
16467 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
16468
16469 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
16470 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
16471 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
16472 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
16473
16474 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
16475 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
16476 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
16477
16478 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
16479
16480 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
16481 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
16482 the web.
16483
16484 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
16485 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
16486 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
16487 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
16488 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
16489 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
16490
16491 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
16492 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
16493 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
16494 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
16495 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
16496 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
16497 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
16498 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
16499 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
16500 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
16501 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
16502 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
16503 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
16504 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
16505 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
16506 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
16507
16508 <blockquote><pre>
16509 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16510   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16511   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16512   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16513   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16514   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16515   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16516
16517 ldapsearch -h ldap \
16518   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
16519   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
16520   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
16521   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
16522   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
16523 </pre></blockquote>
16524
16525 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
16526 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
16527 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
16528 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16529 also exist.</p>
16530
16531 <blockquote><pre>
16532 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16533 objectclass: top
16534 objectclass: dnsdomain
16535 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16536 dc: tjener
16537 arecord: 10.0.2.2
16538 associateddomain: tjener.intern
16539
16540 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16541 objectclass: top
16542 objectclass: dnsdomain2
16543 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16544 dc: 2
16545 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
16546 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
16547 </pre></blockquote>
16548
16549 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
16550 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
16551 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
16552 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
16553 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
16554 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
16555 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
16556 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
16557 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
16558 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
16559 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
16560 instead.</p>
16561
16562 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
16563 like this:</p>
16564
16565 <blockquote><pre>
16566 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16567   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
16568   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
16569   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
16570   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
16571   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
16572
16573 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
16574   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
16575 </pre></blockquote>
16576
16577 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
16578 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
16579 reverse lookups.</p>
16580
16581 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
16582 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
16583 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
16584 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
16585
16586 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
16587 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
16588 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
16589
16590 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
16591 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
16592 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
16593 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
16594 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
16595
16596 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
16597 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
16598 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
16599 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
16600 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
16601
16602 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
16603 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
16604 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
16605 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
16606 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
16607 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
16608
16609 <blockquote><pre>
16610 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
16611     SUP top
16612     AUXILIARY
16613     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
16614           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
16615           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
16616           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
16617           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
16618     ))
16619 </pre></blockquote>
16620
16621 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
16622 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
16623 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
16624 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
16625 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
16626 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
16627
16628 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
16629
16630 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
16631 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
16632 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
16633 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
16634 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
16635
16636 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
16637 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
16638 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
16639 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
16640
16641 <blockquote><pre>
16642 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
16643 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
16644 </pre></blockquote>
16645
16646 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
16647 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
16648 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
16649 search result is this entry:</p>
16650
16651 <blockquote><pre>
16652 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16653 cn: dhcp
16654 objectClass: top
16655 objectClass: dhcpServer
16656 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16657 </pre></blockquote>
16658
16659 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
16660 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
16661 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
16662 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
16663 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
16664 The search result is this entry:</p>
16665
16666 <blockquote><pre>
16667 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16668 cn: DHCP Config
16669 objectClass: top
16670 objectClass: dhcpService
16671 objectClass: dhcpOptions
16672 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16673 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
16674 dhcpStatements: authoritative
16675 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
16676 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
16677 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
16678 </pre></blockquote>
16679
16680 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
16681 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
16682 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
16683 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
16684 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
16685 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
16686 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
16687 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
16688 related computer objects.</p>
16689
16690 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
16691 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
16692 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
16693 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
16694 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
16695 like:</p>
16696
16697 <blockquote><pre>
16698 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16699 cn: hostname
16700 objectClass: top
16701 objectClass: dhcpHost
16702 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16703 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
16704 </pre></blockquote>
16705
16706 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
16707 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
16708 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
16709 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
16710 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
16711 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
16712 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
16713 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
16714 structural object class.
16715
16716 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
16717
16718 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
16719 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
16720 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
16721 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
16722 in the configuration.</p>
16723
16724 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
16725 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
16726 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
16727 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
16728 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
16729 structure.</p>
16730
16731 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
16732 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
16733
16734 <blockquote><pre>
16735 ou=services
16736   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
16737     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
16738     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16739       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16740         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16741     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
16742       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
16743         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
16744     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
16745       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
16746 </pre></blockquote>
16747
16748 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
16749 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
16750 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
16751 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
16752
16753 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
16754 like this:</p>
16755
16756 <blockquote><pre>
16757 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16758 dc: hostname
16759 objectClass: top
16760 objectClass: dhcpHost
16761 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16762 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
16763 associateddomain: hostname.intern
16764 arecord: 10.11.12.13
16765 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16766 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
16767 </pre></blockquote>
16768
16769 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
16770 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
16771 auxiliary object class.</p>
16772
16773       </div>
16774       <div class="tags">
16775
16776
16777         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>.
16778
16779
16780       </div>
16781     </div>
16782     <div class="padding"></div>
16783
16784     <div class="entry">
16785       <div class="title">
16786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
16787       </div>
16788       <div class="date">
16789         14th July 2010
16790       </div>
16791       <div class="body">
16792         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
16793 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
16794 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
16795 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
16796 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
16797
16798 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
16799 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
16800
16801 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
16802 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
16803 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
16804 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16805 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16806 to a slave DNS server.</p>
16807
16808 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16809 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16810 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16811 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16812 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16813 seem to work.</p>
16814
16815 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16816 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16817 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16818 this:</p>
16819
16820 <blockquote><pre>
16821   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16822   cn: hostname
16823   objectClass: dhcphost
16824   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16825   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16826   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16827   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16828   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16829   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16830   ldapconfigsound: Y
16831 </pre></blockquote>
16832
16833 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16834 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16835 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16836 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
16837
16838 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16839 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16840 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16841 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16842 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16843 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16844 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16845 might be a good place to put it.</p>
16846
16847 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16848 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16849
16850       </div>
16851       <div class="tags">
16852
16853
16854         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>.
16855
16856
16857       </div>
16858     </div>
16859     <div class="padding"></div>
16860
16861     <div class="entry">
16862       <div class="title">
16863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
16864       </div>
16865       <div class="date">
16866         11th July 2010
16867       </div>
16868       <div class="body">
16869         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16870 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16871 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16872 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
16873
16874 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16875 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16876 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16877 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16878 LTSP clients.</p>
16879
16880 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16881 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16882 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
16883
16884 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16885 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16886 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
16887
16888 <blockquote><pre>
16889 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16890 #
16891 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16892 #
16893 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16894 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16895 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16896 #
16897 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16898 # existence of attribute names.
16899 #
16900 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16901 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16902 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16903 #
16904 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16905 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16906 #
16907 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
16908 #     SUP top
16909 #     AUXILIARY
16910 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16911
16912 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16913 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
16914     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16915     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
16916         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
16917         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
16918             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
16919             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16920             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
16921             # bass value on to clients
16922             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
16923         done
16924     done
16925 fi
16926 </pre></blockquote>
16927
16928 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16929 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16930 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16931 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16932 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
16933
16934 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16935 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16936
16937 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16938 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16939 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
16940 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
16941 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
16942 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
16943
16944       </div>
16945       <div class="tags">
16946
16947
16948         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>.
16949
16950
16951       </div>
16952     </div>
16953     <div class="padding"></div>
16954
16955     <div class="entry">
16956       <div class="title">
16957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
16958       </div>
16959       <div class="date">
16960          9th July 2010
16961       </div>
16962       <div class="body">
16963         <p>Since
16964 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
16965 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16966 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16967 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
16968 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16969 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16970 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16971 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16972 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
16973 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16974 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16975 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16976 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
16977
16978       </div>
16979       <div class="tags">
16980
16981
16982         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>.
16983
16984
16985       </div>
16986     </div>
16987     <div class="padding"></div>
16988
16989     <div class="entry">
16990       <div class="title">
16991         <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>
16992       </div>
16993       <div class="date">
16994          3rd July 2010
16995       </div>
16996       <div class="body">
16997         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
16998 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
16999 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
17000 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
17001 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
17002 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
17003 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
17004 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
17005
17006 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
17007 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
17008 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
17009 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
17010 publish the difference.</p>
17011
17012 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17013
17014 <blockquote><p>
17015   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17016   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
17017   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
17018   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17019   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
17020   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
17021   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
17022   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
17023 </p></blockquote>
17024
17025 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17026
17027 <blockquote><p>
17028   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
17029   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
17030   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
17031   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
17032   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
17033   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
17034   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17035   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17036   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17037   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
17038   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
17039   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
17040   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
17041   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
17042   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
17043   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17044   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
17045   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
17046   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
17047   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
17048 </p></blockquote>
17049
17050 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17051
17052 <blockquote><p>
17053   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
17054   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
17055   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17056   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17057   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
17058   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
17059   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
17060   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17061   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17062   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17063   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17064   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
17065   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
17066   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
17067   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
17068   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
17069   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
17070   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
17071   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
17072   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
17073   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
17074 </p></blockquote>
17075
17076 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17077
17078 <blockquote><p>
17079   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
17080   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
17081   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
17082 </p></blockquote>
17083
17084 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
17085 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
17086 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
17087 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
17088 the difference somewhat.
17089
17090       </div>
17091       <div class="tags">
17092
17093
17094         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>.
17095
17096
17097       </div>
17098     </div>
17099     <div class="padding"></div>
17100
17101     <div class="entry">
17102       <div class="title">
17103         <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>
17104       </div>
17105       <div class="date">
17106          1st July 2010
17107       </div>
17108       <div class="body">
17109         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
17110 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
17111 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
17112 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
17113 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
17114 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
17115 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
17116 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
17117 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
17118
17119 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
17120
17121 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
17122 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
17123 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
17124 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
17125 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
17126 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
17127 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
17128 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
17129 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
17130 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
17131 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
17132 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
17133 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
17134 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
17135 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
17136
17137 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
17138
17139 <blockquote><pre>
17140 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
17141 </pre></blockquote>
17142
17143 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
17144 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
17145 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
17146 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
17147 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
17148 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
17149 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
17150 on how to get this working.</p>
17151
17152 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
17153 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
17154 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
17155 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
17156 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
17157 instructions I found in the
17158 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
17159 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
17160
17161 <blockquote><pre>
17162         debug-level             0
17163         reload-count            unlimited
17164         paranoia                no
17165
17166         enable-cache            passwd          yes
17167         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
17168         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
17169         suggested-size          passwd          211
17170         check-files             passwd          yes
17171         persistent              passwd          yes
17172         shared                  passwd          yes
17173         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
17174         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
17175
17176         enable-cache            group           yes
17177         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
17178         negative-time-to-live   group           20
17179         suggested-size          group           211
17180         check-files             group           yes
17181         persistent              group           yes
17182         shared                  group           yes
17183         max-db-size             group           33554432
17184         auto-propagate          group           yes
17185
17186         enable-cache            hosts           no
17187         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
17188         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
17189         suggested-size          hosts           211
17190         check-files             hosts           yes
17191         persistent              hosts           yes
17192         shared                  hosts           yes
17193         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
17194
17195         enable-cache            services        yes
17196         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
17197         negative-time-to-live   services        20
17198         suggested-size          services        211
17199         check-files             services        yes
17200         persistent              services        yes
17201         shared                  services        yes
17202         max-db-size             services        33554432
17203 </pre></blockquote>
17204
17205 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
17206 automatically like the one provided in
17207 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
17208 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
17209 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
17210 look like this:</p>
17211
17212 <blockquote><pre>
17213 passwd:         files ldap
17214 group:          files ldap
17215 shadow:         files ldap
17216 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
17217 networks:       files
17218 protocols:      files
17219 services:       files
17220 ethers:         files
17221 rpc:            files
17222 netgroup:       files ldap
17223 </pre></blockquote>
17224
17225 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
17226 shadow and netgroup.</p>
17227
17228 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
17229 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
17230 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
17231 attributes cached.
17232
17233 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
17234   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
17235
17236 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
17237 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
17238 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
17239 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
17240 discovered sssd.</p>
17241
17242 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
17243
17244 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
17245 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
17246 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
17247 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
17248 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
17249 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
17250 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
17251 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
17252 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
17253 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
17254 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
17255 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
17256 version 1.2 is now in testing.
17257
17258 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
17259 roaming setup I want</p>
17260
17261 <blockquote><pre>
17262 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
17263 </pre></blockquote>
17264
17265 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
17266 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
17267
17268 <blockquote><pre>
17269 [sssd]
17270 config_file_version = 2
17271 reconnection_retries = 3
17272 sbus_timeout = 30
17273 services = nss, pam
17274 domains = INTERN
17275
17276 [nss]
17277 filter_groups = root
17278 filter_users = root
17279 reconnection_retries = 3
17280
17281 [pam]
17282 reconnection_retries = 3
17283
17284 [domain/INTERN]
17285 enumerate = false
17286 cache_credentials = true
17287
17288 id_provider = ldap
17289 auth_provider = ldap
17290 chpass_provider = ldap
17291
17292 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
17293 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17294 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
17295 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
17296 </pre></blockquote>
17297
17298 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
17299 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
17300
17301 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
17302 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
17303 modify it manually.</p>
17304
17305 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17306 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17307
17308       </div>
17309       <div class="tags">
17310
17311
17312         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>.
17313
17314
17315       </div>
17316     </div>
17317     <div class="padding"></div>
17318
17319     <div class="entry">
17320       <div class="title">
17321         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
17322       </div>
17323       <div class="date">
17324         28th June 2010
17325       </div>
17326       <div class="body">
17327         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
17328 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
17329 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
17330 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
17331 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
17332 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
17333 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
17334 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
17335 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
17336 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
17337
17338 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
17339 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
17340 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
17341 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
17342 released.</p>
17343
17344 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
17345 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
17346 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
17347 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
17348
17349 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
17350 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17351
17352 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
17353 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
17354 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
17355 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
17356 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
17357
17358       </div>
17359       <div class="tags">
17360
17361
17362         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>.
17363
17364
17365       </div>
17366     </div>
17367     <div class="padding"></div>
17368
17369     <div class="entry">
17370       <div class="title">
17371         <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>
17372       </div>
17373       <div class="date">
17374         24th June 2010
17375       </div>
17376       <div class="body">
17377         <p>A while back, I
17378 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
17379 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
17380 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
17381 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
17382
17383 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
17384 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
17385 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
17386 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
17387
17388 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
17389 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
17390 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
17391 Debian Edu.</p>
17392
17393 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
17394 the
17395 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
17396 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
17397 available today from IETF.</p>
17398
17399 <pre>
17400 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
17401 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
17402 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
17403  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
17404         NAME 'dhcpHost'
17405         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
17406 -       SUP top
17407 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
17408         MUST cn
17409         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
17410         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
17411 </pre>
17412
17413 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
17414 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
17415 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
17416
17417 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17418 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17419
17420       </div>
17421       <div class="tags">
17422
17423
17424         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>.
17425
17426
17427       </div>
17428     </div>
17429     <div class="padding"></div>
17430
17431     <div class="entry">
17432       <div class="title">
17433         <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>
17434       </div>
17435       <div class="date">
17436         16th June 2010
17437       </div>
17438       <div class="body">
17439         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
17440 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
17441 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
17442 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
17443 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
17444 this:
17445
17446 <blockquote><pre>
17447 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17448 tasksel --new-install
17449 </pre></blockquote>
17450
17451 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
17452 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
17453 any output what so ever.
17454
17455 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
17456 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
17457 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
17458 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
17459 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
17460 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
17461 code like this:
17462
17463 <blockquote><pre>
17464 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17465 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
17466 $cmd
17467 </pre></blockquote>
17468
17469 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
17470 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
17471 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
17472 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
17473 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
17474 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
17475 installation.</p>
17476
17477 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
17478 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
17479 like this.</p>
17480
17481       </div>
17482       <div class="tags">
17483
17484
17485         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>.
17486
17487
17488       </div>
17489     </div>
17490     <div class="padding"></div>
17491
17492     <div class="entry">
17493       <div class="title">
17494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
17495       </div>
17496       <div class="date">
17497         13th June 2010
17498       </div>
17499       <div class="body">
17500         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
17501 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
17502 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
17503 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
17504 pages.</p>
17505
17506 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
17507 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
17508 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
17509 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
17510 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
17511 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
17512 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
17513 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
17514 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
17515 see how the project is doing.</p>
17516
17517 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
17518 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
17519 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
17520 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
17521 Windows.  This is great.</p>
17522
17523       </div>
17524       <div class="tags">
17525
17526
17527         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>.
17528
17529
17530       </div>
17531     </div>
17532     <div class="padding"></div>
17533
17534     <div class="entry">
17535       <div class="title">
17536         <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>
17537       </div>
17538       <div class="date">
17539         13th June 2010
17540       </div>
17541       <div class="body">
17542         <p>My
17543 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
17544 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
17545 finally made the upgrade logs available from
17546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
17547 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
17548 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
17549 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
17550
17551 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
17552 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
17553 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
17554 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
17555 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
17556 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
17557 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
17558 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
17559
17560 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
17561 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
17562 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
17563 too surprising.</p>
17564
17565 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
17566 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
17567 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
17568 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
17569 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
17570 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
17571 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
17572 continue.</p>
17573
17574 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
17575 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
17576   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
17577   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
17578   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
17579   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
17580   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
17581   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17582   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17583   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
17584   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
17585   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
17586   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
17587   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17588   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17589   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17590   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17591   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17592   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
17593   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
17594   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
17595   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
17596   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
17597   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
17598   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
17599   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
17600   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17601   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17602   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
17603   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
17604
17605 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
17606
17607 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
17608   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
17609   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
17610   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
17611   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
17612   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
17613   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
17614   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
17615   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
17616   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
17617   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17618   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
17619   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
17620   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
17621   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
17622   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
17623   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
17624   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
17625   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
17626   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
17627   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
17628   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
17629   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
17630   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
17631   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
17632   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
17633   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
17634   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
17635   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
17636   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17637   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
17638   zip</p>
17639
17640 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
17641
17642 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
17643   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
17644   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
17645   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
17646   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
17647   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
17648   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
17649   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
17650   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
17651   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
17652   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
17653   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
17654   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
17655   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
17656   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17657   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
17658   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
17659   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
17660   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
17661   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
17662   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
17663   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
17664   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
17665   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
17666   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
17667   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
17668   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
17669   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
17670
17671 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
17672 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
17673   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17674   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
17675   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
17676   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17677   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
17678   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
17679   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17680   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
17681   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
17682   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
17683   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
17684   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
17685   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
17686   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
17687   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
17688   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17689   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17690   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
17691   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
17692   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17693   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
17694   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
17695   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17696   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17697   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
17698   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
17699   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
17700   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
17701   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
17702   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
17703   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
17704   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
17705   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
17706   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
17707   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
17708   xulrunner-1.9</p>
17709
17710
17711       </div>
17712       <div class="tags">
17713
17714
17715         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>.
17716
17717
17718       </div>
17719     </div>
17720     <div class="padding"></div>
17721
17722     <div class="entry">
17723       <div class="title">
17724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
17725       </div>
17726       <div class="date">
17727         11th June 2010
17728       </div>
17729       <div class="body">
17730         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
17731 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
17732 have been discovered and reported in the process
17733 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
17734 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
17735 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
17736 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
17737 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
17738
17739 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
17740 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
17741 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
17742 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
17743 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
17744 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
17745
17746 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
17747 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
17748 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17749 is created.  The bug report
17750 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
17751 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
17752 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
17753 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
17754 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
17755 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
17756 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
17757 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
17758 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
17759 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
17760 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
17761 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
17762 Debian Squeeze.</p>
17763
17764 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
17765 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
17766 trick:</p>
17767
17768 <blockquote><pre>
17769 #!/bin/sh
17770 set -ex
17771
17772 if [ "$1" ] ; then
17773     desktop=$1
17774 else
17775     desktop=gnome
17776 fi
17777
17778 from=lenny
17779 to=squeeze
17780
17781 exec &lt; /dev/null
17782 unset LANG
17783 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
17784 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
17785 fuser -mv .
17786 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
17787 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17788 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
17789 #!/bin/sh
17790 exit 101
17791 EOF
17792 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
17793 exit_cleanup() {
17794     umount $tmpdir/proc
17795 }
17796 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
17797 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
17798 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
17799
17800 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
17801
17802 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
17803 # to return the correct answers.
17804 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
17805     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
17806
17807 # Include the desktop and laptop task
17808 for test in desktop laptop ; do
17809     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
17810 #!/bin/sh
17811 exit 2
17812 EOF
17813     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
17814 done
17815
17816 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
17817 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
17818 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
17819 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
17820
17821 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
17822 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
17823 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
17824 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
17825 fuser -mv
17826 </pre></blockquote>
17827
17828 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
17829 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
17830 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
17831 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
17832 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
17833 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
17834
17835 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
17836 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
17837 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
17838 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
17839 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
17840 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
17841 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
17842
17843 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
17844 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
17845 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
17846 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
17847 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
17848 packages.</p>
17849
17850       </div>
17851       <div class="tags">
17852
17853
17854         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>.
17855
17856
17857       </div>
17858     </div>
17859     <div class="padding"></div>
17860
17861     <div class="entry">
17862       <div class="title">
17863         <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>
17864       </div>
17865       <div class="date">
17866          6th June 2010
17867       </div>
17868       <div class="body">
17869         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
17870 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
17871 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
17872 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
17873 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
17874 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
17875 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
17876
17877 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
17878 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
17879 COLUMNS):</p>
17880
17881 <blockquote><pre>
17882 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
17883 previous=N
17884 PREVLEVEL=
17885 RUNLEVEL=
17886 runlevel=S
17887 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
17888 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
17889 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
17890 </pre></blockquote>
17891
17892 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
17893 script.</p>
17894
17895 <blockquote><pre>
17896 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
17897 previous=N
17898 PREVLEVEL=N
17899 RUNLEVEL=S
17900 runlevel=S
17901 </pre></blockquote>
17902
17903 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
17904 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
17905 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
17906
17907 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
17908 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
17909 choice.</p>
17910
17911       </div>
17912       <div class="tags">
17913
17914
17915         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>.
17916
17917
17918       </div>
17919     </div>
17920     <div class="padding"></div>
17921
17922     <div class="entry">
17923       <div class="title">
17924         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
17925       </div>
17926       <div class="date">
17927          6th June 2010
17928       </div>
17929       <div class="body">
17930         <p>Via the
17931 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
17932 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
17933 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
17934 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
17935 following the standards wars of today.</p>
17936
17937       </div>
17938       <div class="tags">
17939
17940
17941         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>.
17942
17943
17944       </div>
17945     </div>
17946     <div class="padding"></div>
17947
17948     <div class="entry">
17949       <div class="title">
17950         <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>
17951       </div>
17952       <div class="date">
17953          3rd June 2010
17954       </div>
17955       <div class="body">
17956         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
17957 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17958 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17959 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17960 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
17961
17962 <blockquote><pre>
17963 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17964   vendor                    count
17965   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17966     PowerEdge 1750              1
17967   IBM                           1
17968     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17969   Intel                         2
17970   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17971 maintainer:~#
17972 </pre></blockquote>
17973
17974 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17975 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17976 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17977 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17978 option to list the individual machines.</p>
17979
17980 <p>A larger list is
17981 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
17982 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17983 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17984 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17985 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17986 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17987 collector.</p>
17988
17989       </div>
17990       <div class="tags">
17991
17992
17993         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>.
17994
17995
17996       </div>
17997     </div>
17998     <div class="padding"></div>
17999
18000     <div class="entry">
18001       <div class="title">
18002         <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>
18003       </div>
18004       <div class="date">
18005          1st June 2010
18006       </div>
18007       <div class="body">
18008         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
18009 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
18010 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
18011 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
18012 wait.</p>
18013
18014 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
18015 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
18016 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
18017 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
18018 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
18019 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
18020
18021 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
18022 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
18023 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
18024 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
18025 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
18026 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
18027 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
18028 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
18029
18030 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
18031
18032       </div>
18033       <div class="tags">
18034
18035
18036         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>.
18037
18038
18039       </div>
18040     </div>
18041     <div class="padding"></div>
18042
18043     <div class="entry">
18044       <div class="title">
18045         <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>
18046       </div>
18047       <div class="date">
18048         27th May 2010
18049       </div>
18050       <div class="body">
18051         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
18052 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
18053 issues are known and should be solved:
18054
18055 <p><ul>
18056
18057 <li>The wicd package seen to
18058 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
18059 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
18060 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
18061 seem to be on the case.</li>
18062
18063 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
18064 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
18065 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
18066 maintainer is on the case.</li>
18067
18068 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
18069 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
18070 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
18071 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
18072 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
18073 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
18074 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
18075 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
18076
18077 </ul></p>
18078
18079 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
18080 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
18081 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
18082 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
18083
18084 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18085 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18086 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18087 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18088
18089 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
18090
18091       </div>
18092       <div class="tags">
18093
18094
18095         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>.
18096
18097
18098       </div>
18099     </div>
18100     <div class="padding"></div>
18101
18102     <div class="entry">
18103       <div class="title">
18104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
18105       </div>
18106       <div class="date">
18107         22nd May 2010
18108       </div>
18109       <div class="body">
18110         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
18111 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
18112 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
18113 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
18114
18115 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
18116 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
18117 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
18118 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
18119 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
18120 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
18121 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
18122 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
18123 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
18124 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
18125 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
18126 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
18127 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
18128 going to work.</p>
18129
18130 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
18131 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
18132 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
18133 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
18134 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
18135 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
18136 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
18137 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
18138 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
18139 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
18140 Edu.</p>
18141
18142 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
18143 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
18144 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
18145 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
18146 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
18147 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
18148
18149 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
18150 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
18151
18152       </div>
18153       <div class="tags">
18154
18155
18156         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>.
18157
18158
18159       </div>
18160     </div>
18161     <div class="padding"></div>
18162
18163     <div class="entry">
18164       <div class="title">
18165         <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>
18166       </div>
18167       <div class="date">
18168         19th May 2010
18169       </div>
18170       <div class="body">
18171         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
18172 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
18173 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
18174 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
18175 into unstable.  The
18176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
18177 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
18178 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
18179 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
18180 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
18181 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
18182 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
18183
18184 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
18185 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
18186 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
18187 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
18188 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
18189 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
18190 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
18191 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
18192
18193 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
18194 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
18195 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
18196 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
18197 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
18198 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
18199 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
18200
18201 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
18202 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
18203 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
18204 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
18205 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
18206 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
18207 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
18208 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
18209 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
18210 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
18211 on the home directory servers.</p>
18212
18213 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
18214 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
18215 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
18216 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
18217 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
18218 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
18219
18220 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18221 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18222
18223       </div>
18224       <div class="tags">
18225
18226
18227         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>.
18228
18229
18230       </div>
18231     </div>
18232     <div class="padding"></div>
18233
18234     <div class="entry">
18235       <div class="title">
18236         <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>
18237       </div>
18238       <div class="date">
18239         14th May 2010
18240       </div>
18241       <div class="body">
18242         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
18243 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
18244 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
18245 expected, if I am to believe the
18246 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
18247 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
18248 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
18249 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
18250 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
18251 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
18252 version.</p>
18253
18254 More information about
18255 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18256 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
18257 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
18258 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
18259
18260 <blockquote><pre>
18261 CONCURRENCY=none
18262 </pre></blockquote>
18263
18264 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18265 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18266 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18267 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18268
18269       </div>
18270       <div class="tags">
18271
18272
18273         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>.
18274
18275
18276       </div>
18277     </div>
18278     <div class="padding"></div>
18279
18280     <div class="entry">
18281       <div class="title">
18282         <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>
18283       </div>
18284       <div class="date">
18285         14th May 2010
18286       </div>
18287       <div class="body">
18288         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
18289 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
18290 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
18291 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
18292 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
18293 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
18294 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
18295 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
18296
18297 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
18298 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
18299 this on the collector host:</p>
18300
18301 <blockquote><pre>
18302 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
18303 </pre></blockquote>
18304
18305 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
18306 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
18307
18308 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
18309 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
18310 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
18311 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
18312 written yet.</p>
18313
18314       </div>
18315       <div class="tags">
18316
18317
18318         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>.
18319
18320
18321       </div>
18322     </div>
18323     <div class="padding"></div>
18324
18325     <div class="entry">
18326       <div class="title">
18327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
18328       </div>
18329       <div class="date">
18330         13th May 2010
18331       </div>
18332       <div class="body">
18333         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
18334 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
18335 has been
18336 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
18337
18338 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
18339 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
18340 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
18341 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
18342 based boot system.  Tollef is
18343 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
18344 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
18345 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
18346 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
18347 at the moment do not.</p>
18348
18349 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
18350 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
18351 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
18352 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
18353 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
18354 way forward.</p>
18355
18356 <p>In the mean time, based on the
18357 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
18358 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
18359 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
18360 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
18361 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
18362 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
18363 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
18364 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
18365
18366       </div>
18367       <div class="tags">
18368
18369
18370         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>.
18371
18372
18373       </div>
18374     </div>
18375     <div class="padding"></div>
18376
18377     <div class="entry">
18378       <div class="title">
18379         <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>
18380       </div>
18381       <div class="date">
18382          6th May 2010
18383       </div>
18384       <div class="body">
18385         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
18386 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
18387 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
18388 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
18389 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
18390 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
18391 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
18392
18393 <blockquote><pre>
18394 CONCURRENCY=makefile
18395 </pre></blockquote>
18396
18397 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
18398 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
18399 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
18400 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
18401 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
18402 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
18403 make this happen.</p>
18404
18405 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
18406 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
18407 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
18408 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
18409 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
18410
18411 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
18412 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
18413 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
18414 fix the remaining issues.</p>
18415
18416 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
18417 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
18418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
18419 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
18420
18421       </div>
18422       <div class="tags">
18423
18424
18425         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>.
18426
18427
18428       </div>
18429     </div>
18430     <div class="padding"></div>
18431
18432     <div class="entry">
18433       <div class="title">
18434         <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>
18435       </div>
18436       <div class="date">
18437          2nd May 2010
18438       </div>
18439       <div class="body">
18440         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
18441 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
18442 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
18443
18444 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
18445 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
18446 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
18447 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
18448 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
18449
18450 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
18451 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
18452
18453 <blockquote><pre>
18454 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18455 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
18456 Password expires                                        : never
18457 Password inactive                                       : never
18458 Account expires                                         : never
18459 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18460 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
18461 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18462 root@tjener:~#
18463 </pre></blockquote>
18464
18465 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
18466 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
18467 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
18468 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
18469 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
18470 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
18471
18472 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
18473 intended:</p>
18474
18475 <blockquote><pre>
18476 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
18477 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
18478 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
18479 Password expires                                        : never
18480 Password inactive                                       : never
18481 Account expires                                         : never
18482 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
18483 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
18484 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
18485 root@tjener:~#
18486 </pre></blockquote>
18487
18488 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
18489 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
18490 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
18491
18492 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
18493 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
18494
18495 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
18496 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18497
18498 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
18499 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
18500 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
18501 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
18502 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
18503 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
18504 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
18505
18506 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
18507 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
18508 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
18509 change.</p>
18510
18511       </div>
18512       <div class="tags">
18513
18514
18515         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>.
18516
18517
18518       </div>
18519     </div>
18520     <div class="padding"></div>
18521
18522     <div class="entry">
18523       <div class="title">
18524         <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>
18525       </div>
18526       <div class="date">
18527         28th April 2010
18528       </div>
18529       <div class="body">
18530         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
18531 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
18532 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
18533 and go.</p>
18534
18535 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
18536 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
18537 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
18538 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
18539
18540 <ul>
18541
18542  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
18543    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
18544    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
18545    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
18546    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
18547    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
18548    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
18549    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
18550    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
18551    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
18552    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
18553    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
18554
18555  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
18556    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
18557    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
18558    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
18559    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
18560    or the Fedora developed
18561    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
18562    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
18563
18564  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
18565    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
18566    directory, using unison.</li>
18567
18568  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
18569    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
18570    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
18571    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
18572    implemented.</li>
18573
18574  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
18575    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
18576
18577  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
18578    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
18579    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
18580
18581 </ul>
18582
18583 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
18584 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
18585 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
18586 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
18587 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
18588 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
18589 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
18590 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
18591 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
18592
18593 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18594 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18595
18596       </div>
18597       <div class="tags">
18598
18599
18600         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>.
18601
18602
18603       </div>
18604     </div>
18605     <div class="padding"></div>
18606
18607     <div class="entry">
18608       <div class="title">
18609         <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>
18610       </div>
18611       <div class="date">
18612         19th April 2010
18613       </div>
18614       <div class="body">
18615         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
18616 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
18617 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
18618 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
18619 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
18620 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
18621 restrictions on the web, for example from
18622 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
18623 epub-version from
18624 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
18625 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
18626 strongly recommend this book.</p>
18627
18628       </div>
18629       <div class="tags">
18630
18631
18632         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>.
18633
18634
18635       </div>
18636     </div>
18637     <div class="padding"></div>
18638
18639     <div class="entry">
18640       <div class="title">
18641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
18642       </div>
18643       <div class="date">
18644         14th April 2010
18645       </div>
18646       <div class="body">
18647         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
18648 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
18649 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
18650 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
18651 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
18652 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
18653 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
18654 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
18655 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
18656
18657 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
18658 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
18659 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
18660 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
18661 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
18662
18663 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
18664 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
18665
18666 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
18667 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
18668 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
18669 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
18670 to work properly.</p>
18671
18672 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
18673 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
18674 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
18675 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
18676 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
18677 time.</p>
18678
18679 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
18680 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
18681 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
18682 up in a few days.</p>
18683
18684       </div>
18685       <div class="tags">
18686
18687
18688         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>.
18689
18690
18691       </div>
18692     </div>
18693     <div class="padding"></div>
18694
18695     <div class="entry">
18696       <div class="title">
18697         <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>
18698       </div>
18699       <div class="date">
18700          6th March 2010
18701       </div>
18702       <div class="body">
18703         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
18704 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
18705 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
18706 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
18707 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
18708 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
18709
18710 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
18711 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
18712 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
18713 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
18714
18715 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
18716 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
18717 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
18718 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
18719 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
18720 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
18721
18722       </div>
18723       <div class="tags">
18724
18725
18726         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>.
18727
18728
18729       </div>
18730     </div>
18731     <div class="padding"></div>
18732
18733     <div class="entry">
18734       <div class="title">
18735         <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>
18736       </div>
18737       <div class="date">
18738         11th February 2010
18739       </div>
18740       <div class="body">
18741         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
18742 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
18743 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
18744 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
18745 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
18746 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
18747 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
18748
18749 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
18750
18751 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
18752 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
18753 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
18754 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
18755
18756       </div>
18757       <div class="tags">
18758
18759
18760         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>.
18761
18762
18763       </div>
18764     </div>
18765     <div class="padding"></div>
18766
18767     <div class="entry">
18768       <div class="title">
18769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
18770       </div>
18771       <div class="date">
18772         27th January 2010
18773       </div>
18774       <div class="body">
18775         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
18776 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
18777 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
18778 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
18779 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
18780 further.</p>
18781
18782 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
18783 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
18784 configured to be a server for the
18785 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
18786 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
18787 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
18788 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
18789 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
18790 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
18791 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
18792 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
18793 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
18794 and Nagios configuration.</p>
18795
18796 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
18797 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
18798 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
18799 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
18800
18801 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
18802 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
18803 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
18804 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
18805 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
18806 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
18807 the machine.</p>
18808
18809 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
18810 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
18811 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
18812 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
18813
18814 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
18815 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
18816 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
18817 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
18818 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
18819 everything is taken care of.</p>
18820
18821       </div>
18822       <div class="tags">
18823
18824
18825         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>.
18826
18827
18828       </div>
18829     </div>
18830     <div class="padding"></div>
18831
18832     <div class="entry">
18833       <div class="title">
18834         <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>
18835       </div>
18836       <div class="date">
18837         12th August 2009
18838       </div>
18839       <div class="body">
18840         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
18841 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
18842 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
18843 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
18844
18845 <table>
18846 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18847 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18848 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
18849 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
18850 </table>
18851
18852 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
18853 got these numbers:</p>
18854
18855 <table>
18856 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18857 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
18858 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
18859 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
18860 </table>
18861
18862 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
18863
18864 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
18865 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
18866 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
18867 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
18868 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
18869
18870
18871 <table>
18872 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18873 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
18874 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
18875 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
18876 </table>
18877
18878 <p>And with 'site:no':
18879
18880 <table>
18881 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
18882 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
18883 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
18884 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
18885 </table>
18886
18887 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
18888 numbers.</p>
18889
18890       </div>
18891       <div class="tags">
18892
18893
18894         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>.
18895
18896
18897       </div>
18898     </div>
18899     <div class="padding"></div>
18900
18901     <div class="entry">
18902       <div class="title">
18903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
18904       </div>
18905       <div class="date">
18906          8th August 2009
18907       </div>
18908       <div class="body">
18909         <p>According to <a
18910 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
18911 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
18912 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
18913 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
18914 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
18915 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
18916 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
18917 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
18918 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
18919 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
18920
18921 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
18922 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
18923 seminar this autumn.</p>
18924
18925       </div>
18926       <div class="tags">
18927
18928
18929         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>.
18930
18931
18932       </div>
18933     </div>
18934     <div class="padding"></div>
18935
18936     <div class="entry">
18937       <div class="title">
18938         <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>
18939       </div>
18940       <div class="date">
18941         27th July 2009
18942       </div>
18943       <div class="body">
18944         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
18945 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
18946 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
18947 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
18948 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
18949 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
18950 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
18951
18952 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
18953 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
18954 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
18955
18956       </div>
18957       <div class="tags">
18958
18959
18960         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>.
18961
18962
18963       </div>
18964     </div>
18965     <div class="padding"></div>
18966
18967     <div class="entry">
18968       <div class="title">
18969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
18970       </div>
18971       <div class="date">
18972         22nd July 2009
18973       </div>
18974       <div class="body">
18975         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
18976 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
18977 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
18978 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
18979 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
18980 the package up to date.</p>
18981
18982 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
18983 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
18984 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
18985 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
18986 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
18987 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
18988 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
18989 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
18990 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
18991 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
18992 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
18993 working on the future release.</p>
18994
18995 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
18996 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
18997
18998       </div>
18999       <div class="tags">
19000
19001
19002         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>.
19003
19004
19005       </div>
19006     </div>
19007     <div class="padding"></div>
19008
19009     <div class="entry">
19010       <div class="title">
19011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
19012       </div>
19013       <div class="date">
19014         24th June 2009
19015       </div>
19016       <div class="body">
19017         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
19018 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
19019 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
19020 funded
19021 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
19022 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
19023 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
19024 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
19025 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
19026 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
19027
19028 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
19029 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
19030 boot:</p>
19031
19032 <ul>
19033
19034 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
19035
19036 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
19037    clock is in UTC.</li>
19038
19039 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
19040    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19041    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
19042
19043 </ul>
19044
19045 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
19046 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
19047 Villegas</a>.
19048
19049 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
19050 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
19051 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
19052 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
19053 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
19054 using this.</p>
19055
19056 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
19057 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
19058 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
19059 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
19060 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
19061 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
19062 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
19063
19064       </div>
19065       <div class="tags">
19066
19067
19068         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>.
19069
19070
19071       </div>
19072     </div>
19073     <div class="padding"></div>
19074
19075     <div class="entry">
19076       <div class="title">
19077         <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>
19078       </div>
19079       <div class="date">
19080          2nd May 2009
19081       </div>
19082       <div class="body">
19083         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
19084 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
19085 do not yet know them.</p>
19086
19087 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
19088 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
19089 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
19090 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
19091 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
19092 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
19093 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
19094 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
19095 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
19096 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
19097 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
19098
19099 <p>The second one is
19100 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
19101 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
19102 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
19103 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
19104 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
19105 and the company behind it is running
19106 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
19107 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
19108 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
19109 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
19110 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
19111 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
19112 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
19113 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
19114
19115 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
19116 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
19117 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
19118 surrounded by today.</p>
19119
19120       </div>
19121       <div class="tags">
19122
19123
19124         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>.
19125
19126
19127       </div>
19128     </div>
19129     <div class="padding"></div>
19130
19131     <div class="entry">
19132       <div class="title">
19133         <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>
19134       </div>
19135       <div class="date">
19136         28th April 2009
19137       </div>
19138       <div class="body">
19139         <p>Julien Blache
19140 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
19141 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
19142 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
19143 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
19144 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
19145 properties.</p>
19146
19147       </div>
19148       <div class="tags">
19149
19150
19151         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>.
19152
19153
19154       </div>
19155     </div>
19156     <div class="padding"></div>
19157
19158     <div class="entry">
19159       <div class="title">
19160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
19161       </div>
19162       <div class="date">
19163          5th April 2009
19164       </div>
19165       <div class="body">
19166         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
19167 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
19168 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
19169 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
19170 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
19171 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
19172 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
19173 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
19174
19175 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
19176 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
19177 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
19178   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
19179   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
19180
19181 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
19182 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
19183 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
19184 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
19185
19186 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
19187 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
19188 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
19189 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
19190
19191 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
19192 set -e
19193 URL="$1"
19194 SAVEFILE="$2"
19195 DURATION="$3"
19196 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
19197   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
19198   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
19199 pid=$!
19200 sleep $DURATION
19201 kill $pid
19202 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
19203
19204       </div>
19205       <div class="tags">
19206
19207
19208         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>.
19209
19210
19211       </div>
19212     </div>
19213     <div class="padding"></div>
19214
19215     <div class="entry">
19216       <div class="title">
19217         <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>
19218       </div>
19219       <div class="date">
19220         30th March 2009
19221       </div>
19222       <div class="body">
19223         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
19224 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
19225 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
19226 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
19227 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
19228 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
19229 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
19230 application.</p>
19231
19232 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
19233 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
19234 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
19235 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
19236 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
19237 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
19238 blocked from doing so.</p>
19239
19240 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
19241 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
19242 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
19243 requirements change.</p>
19244
19245 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
19246 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
19247 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
19248
19249       </div>
19250       <div class="tags">
19251
19252
19253         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>.
19254
19255
19256       </div>
19257     </div>
19258     <div class="padding"></div>
19259
19260     <div class="entry">
19261       <div class="title">
19262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
19263       </div>
19264       <div class="date">
19265         29th March 2009
19266       </div>
19267       <div class="body">
19268         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
19269 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
19270 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
19271 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
19272 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
19273 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
19274 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
19275 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
19276 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
19277 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
19278 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
19279 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
19280 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
19281 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
19282 now. :)</p>
19283
19284       </div>
19285       <div class="tags">
19286
19287
19288         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>.
19289
19290
19291       </div>
19292     </div>
19293     <div class="padding"></div>
19294
19295     <div class="entry">
19296       <div class="title">
19297         <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>
19298       </div>
19299       <div class="date">
19300         29th March 2009
19301       </div>
19302       <div class="body">
19303         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
19304 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
19305 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
19306 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
19307 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
19308 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
19309
19310 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
19311 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
19312 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
19313 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
19314 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
19315 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
19316 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
19317 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
19318 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
19319 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
19320 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
19321 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
19322 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
19323
19324 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
19325 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
19326 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
19327 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
19328
19329 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
19330 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
19331
19332 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
19333 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
19334 new IETF work group?</p>
19335
19336       </div>
19337       <div class="tags">
19338
19339
19340         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>.
19341
19342
19343       </div>
19344     </div>
19345     <div class="padding"></div>
19346
19347     <div class="entry">
19348       <div class="title">
19349         <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>
19350       </div>
19351       <div class="date">
19352         28th February 2009
19353       </div>
19354       <div class="body">
19355         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
19356 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
19357 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
19358 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
19359 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
19360 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
19361 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
19362 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
19363 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
19364 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
19365 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
19366 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
19367 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
19368 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
19369 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
19370 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
19371 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
19372 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
19373 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
19374 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
19375 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
19376 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
19377 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
19378 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
19379 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
19380 machine.</p>
19381
19382 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
19383 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
19384 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
19385 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
19386 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
19387 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
19388 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
19389
19390 <pre>
19391 use LWP::Simple;
19392 use POSIX;
19393 use WWW::Mechanize;
19394 use Date::Parse;
19395 [...]
19396 sub get_support_info {
19397     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
19398     my $str;
19399
19400     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
19401         # fetch website from Dell support
19402         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";
19403         my $webpage = get($url);
19404         return undef unless ($webpage);
19405
19406         my $daysleft = -1;
19407         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
19408         foreach my $line (@lines) {
19409             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
19410             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19411             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
19412
19413             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
19414             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
19415             my $lastend = "";
19416             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
19417                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
19418
19419                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19420                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19421                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19422                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
19423                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
19424                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
19425                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
19426             }
19427             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19428             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19429                 if ($lastend lt $today);
19430         }
19431     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
19432         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
19433         my $url =
19434             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
19435         $mech->get($url);
19436         my $fields = {
19437             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
19438             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
19439             'country' => 'NO',
19440             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
19441             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
19442         };
19443         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
19444                             fields      => $fields );
19445         # Next step is screen scraping
19446         my $content = $mech->content();
19447
19448         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19449         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19450         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19451         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19452
19453         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19454
19455         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
19456             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
19457                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
19458             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
19459             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19460                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
19461             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
19462                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
19463
19464             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
19465
19466             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19467                 if ($end lt $today);
19468         }
19469     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
19470         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
19471         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
19472         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
19473             my $content =
19474                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
19475             if ($content) {
19476                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
19477                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
19478                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
19479                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
19480
19481                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
19482                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
19483
19484                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
19485
19486                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
19487                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
19488                     if ($end lt $today);
19489             }
19490         }
19491     }
19492     return $str;
19493 }
19494 </pre>
19495
19496 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
19497 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
19498 from dmidecode.</p>
19499
19500 <pre>
19501 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
19502                        "447707-B21");
19503 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
19504 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
19505                        "1234567");
19506 </pre>
19507
19508 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
19509 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
19510
19511 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
19512 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
19513 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
19514 do so.</p>
19515
19516       </div>
19517       <div class="tags">
19518
19519
19520         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>.
19521
19522
19523       </div>
19524     </div>
19525     <div class="padding"></div>
19526
19527     <div class="entry">
19528       <div class="title">
19529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
19530       </div>
19531       <div class="date">
19532         20th February 2009
19533       </div>
19534       <div class="body">
19535         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
19536 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
19537 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
19538 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
19539 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
19540 the "missing" computer.</p>
19541
19542 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
19543 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
19544 code blocks as defined in the
19545 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
19546 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
19547 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
19548 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
19549 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
19550 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
19551 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
19552 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
19553 codes.</p>
19554
19555 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
19556 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
19557 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
19558 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
19559 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
19560 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
19561
19562 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
19563 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
19564 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
19565 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
19566 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
19567 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
19568 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
19569 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
19570 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
19571 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
19572
19573 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
19574 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
19575 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
19576
19577       </div>
19578       <div class="tags">
19579
19580
19581         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>.
19582
19583
19584       </div>
19585     </div>
19586     <div class="padding"></div>
19587
19588     <div class="entry">
19589       <div class="title">
19590         <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>
19591       </div>
19592       <div class="date">
19593         17th January 2009
19594       </div>
19595       <div class="body">
19596         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
19597 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
19598 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
19599 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
19600 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
19601 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
19602 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
19603 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
19604 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
19605 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
19606 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
19607 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
19608 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
19609 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
19610
19611 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
19612 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
19613 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
19614 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
19615 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
19616 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
19617 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
19618 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
19619 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
19620 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
19621 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
19622 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
19623 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
19624 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
19625 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
19626 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
19627 playing when the download is done.</p>
19628
19629 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
19630 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
19631 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
19632 too.</p>
19633
19634 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
19635 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
19636 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
19637 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
19638
19639       </div>
19640       <div class="tags">
19641
19642
19643         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>.
19644
19645
19646       </div>
19647     </div>
19648     <div class="padding"></div>
19649
19650     <div class="entry">
19651       <div class="title">
19652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
19653       </div>
19654       <div class="date">
19655         28th December 2008
19656       </div>
19657       <div class="body">
19658         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
19659 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
19660 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
19661 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
19662 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
19663 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
19664 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
19665 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
19666 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
19667 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
19668 source, sink and mixer applications and
19669 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
19670 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
19671 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
19672 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
19673 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
19674 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
19675 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
19676 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
19677 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
19678
19679 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
19680 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
19681 larger stick as well.</p>
19682
19683       </div>
19684       <div class="tags">
19685
19686
19687         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>.
19688
19689
19690       </div>
19691     </div>
19692     <div class="padding"></div>
19693
19694     <div class="entry">
19695       <div class="title">
19696         <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>
19697       </div>
19698       <div class="date">
19699          7th December 2008
19700       </div>
19701       <div class="body">
19702         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
19703 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
19704 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
19705 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
19706 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
19707 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
19708 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
19709 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
19710
19711 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
19712 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
19713 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
19714 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
19715 of these cards.</p>
19716
19717       </div>
19718       <div class="tags">
19719
19720
19721         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>.
19722
19723
19724       </div>
19725     </div>
19726     <div class="padding"></div>
19727
19728     <div class="entry">
19729       <div class="title">
19730         <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>
19731       </div>
19732       <div class="date">
19733         25th November 2008
19734       </div>
19735       <div class="body">
19736         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
19737 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
19738 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
19739 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
19740 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
19741 notes are available on
19742 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
19743 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
19744 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
19745 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
19746 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
19747 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
19748 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
19749 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
19750 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
19751
19752 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
19753 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
19754
19755       </div>
19756       <div class="tags">
19757
19758
19759         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>.
19760
19761
19762       </div>
19763     </div>
19764     <div class="padding"></div>
19765
19766     <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>
19767     <div id="sidebar">
19768
19769
19770
19771 <h2>Archive</h2>
19772 <ul>
19773
19774 <li>2014
19775 <ul>
19776
19777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19778
19779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
19780
19781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
19782
19783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (5)</a></li>
19784
19785 </ul></li>
19786
19787 <li>2013
19788 <ul>
19789
19790 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
19791
19792 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
19793
19794 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
19795
19796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
19797
19798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19799
19800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
19801
19802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19803
19804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19805
19806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
19807
19808 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
19809
19810 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
19811
19812 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19813
19814 </ul></li>
19815
19816 <li>2012
19817 <ul>
19818
19819 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
19820
19821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
19822
19823 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
19824
19825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
19826
19827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
19828
19829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
19830
19831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
19832
19833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19834
19835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
19836
19837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
19838
19839 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
19840
19841 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19842
19843 </ul></li>
19844
19845 <li>2011
19846 <ul>
19847
19848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
19849
19850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
19851
19852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
19853
19854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
19855
19856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
19857
19858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
19859
19860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
19861
19862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
19863
19864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
19865
19866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19867
19868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19869
19870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
19871
19872 </ul></li>
19873
19874 <li>2010
19875 <ul>
19876
19877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
19878
19879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
19880
19881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
19882
19883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
19884
19885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19886
19887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
19888
19889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
19890
19891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
19892
19893 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
19894
19895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
19896
19897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
19898
19899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
19900
19901 </ul></li>
19902
19903 <li>2009
19904 <ul>
19905
19906 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
19907
19908 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
19909
19910 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
19911
19912 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
19913
19914 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
19915
19916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
19917
19918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
19919
19920 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
19921
19922 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
19923
19924 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
19925
19926 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
19927
19928 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
19929
19930 </ul></li>
19931
19932 <li>2008
19933 <ul>
19934
19935 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
19936
19937 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
19938
19939 </ul></li>
19940
19941 </ul>
19942
19943
19944
19945 <h2>Tags</h2>
19946 <ul>
19947
19948  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
19949
19950  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
19951
19952  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
19953
19954  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
19955
19956  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
19957
19958  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
19959
19960  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
19961
19962  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
19963
19964  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (97)</a></li>
19965
19966  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (146)</a></li>
19967
19968  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
19969
19970  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
19971
19972  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
19973
19974  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
19975
19976  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (244)</a></li>
19977
19978  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
19979
19980  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
19981
19982  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
19983
19984  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (8)</a></li>
19985
19986  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
19987
19988  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (40)</a></li>
19989
19990  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
19991
19992  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
19993
19994  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
19995
19996  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (7)</a></li>
19997
19998  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
19999
20000  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
20001
20002  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (26)</a></li>
20003
20004  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (245)</a></li>
20005
20006  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
20007
20008  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
20009
20010  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
20011
20012  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (46)</a></li>
20013
20014  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (72)</a></li>
20015
20016  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
20017
20018  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
20019
20020  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
20021
20022  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
20023
20024  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
20025
20026  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
20027
20028  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
20029
20030  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
20031
20032  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (40)</a></li>
20033
20034  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
20035
20036  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
20037
20038  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
20039
20040  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
20041
20042  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
20043
20044  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (25)</a></li>
20045
20046  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
20047
20048  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
20049
20050  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (40)</a></li>
20051
20052  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
20053
20054  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (30)</a></li>
20055
20056 </ul>
20057
20058
20059     </div>
20060     <p style="text-align: right">
20061  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
20062 </p>
20063
20064   </body>
20065 </html>