<channel>
<title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
<description></description>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
- <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
+ <atom:link href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p align="center"><img align="center" src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width="60%"/></p>
-
-<p>I am happy to report that we finally made it! Norwegian Bokmål
-became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
-based edition of "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
-Administrator's Handbook</a>". The print proof reading copy arrived
-some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
-general distribution. This updated paperback edition <a
-href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available from
-lulu.com</a>. The book is also available for download in electronic
-form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
-<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
-which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
-number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
-really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
-knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem. The book will be
-available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
-Noble soon, but I recommend buying
-"<a href="https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html">Håndbok
-for Debian-administratoren</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
+ <title>«Virkninger av angrefristloven», hovedfagsoppgaven som fikk endret en lov</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Virkninger_av_angrefristloven___hovedfagsoppgaven_som_fikk_endret_en_lov.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Virkninger_av_angrefristloven___hovedfagsoppgaven_som_fikk_endret_en_lov.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 29 Oct 2023 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-10-29-bok-angrefrist.svg" width="20%" align="center"></a>
+
+<p>I 1979 leverte Ole-Erik Yrvin en hovedfagsoppgave for Cand. Scient.
+ ved Institutt for sosiologi på Universitetet i Oslo på oppdrag fra
+ Forbruker- og administrasjonsdepartementet. Oppgaven evaluerte
+ Angrefristloven fra 1972, og det han oppdaget førte til at loven ble
+ endret fire år senere.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg har kjent Ole-Erik en stund, og synes det var trist at hans
+ oppgave ikke lenger er tilgjengelig, hverken fra oppdragsgiver
+ eller fra universitetet. Hans forsøk på å få den avbildet og lagt
+ ut på Internett har vist seg fånyttes, så derfor tilbød jeg meg for
+ en stund tilbake å publisere den og gjøre den tilgjengelig med
+ fribruksvilkår på Internett. Det er nå klart, og hovedfagsoppgaven
+ er tilgjengelig blant annet via <a
+ href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">min liste over
+ publiserte bøker</a>, både som nettside,
+ <a href="https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Ole-Erik+Yrvin">digital
+ bok i ePub-format og på papir fra lulu.com</a>. Jeg regner med at
+ den også vil dukke opp på nettbokhandlere i løpet av en måned eller
+ to.</p>
+
+<p>Alle tabeller og figurer er gjenskapt for bedre lesbarhet, noen
+ skrivefeil rettet opp og mange referanser har fått flere detaljer
+ som ISBN-nummer og DOI-referanse. Selv om jeg ikke regner med at
+ dette blir en kioskvelter, så håper jeg denne nye utgaven kan komme
+ fremtiden til glede.</p>
+
+<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
+det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
+til min adresse
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>. Merk,
+betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>«underordnet tjenestemann blir inhabil fordi en overordnet er inhabil».</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_underordnet_tjenestemann_blir_inhabil_fordi_en_overordnet_er_inhabil__.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_underordnet_tjenestemann_blir_inhabil_fordi_en_overordnet_er_inhabil__.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 7 Sep 2023 09:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Medlemmene av Norges regjering har demonstert de siste månedene at
+habilitetsvureringer ikke er deres sterke side og det gjelder både
+Arbeiderpartiets og Senterpartiers representater. Det er heldigvis
+enklere i det private, da inhabilitetsreglene kun gjelder de som
+jobber for folket, ikke seg selv. Sist ut er utenriksminister
+Huitfeldt. I går kom nyheten om at
+<a href="https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/riksadvokaten_-okokrim-nestsjef-kan-behandle-huitfeldt-saken-1.16545162">Riksadvokaten
+har konkludert med at nestsjefen i Økokrim kan behandle sak om
+habilitet og innsidekunnskap</a> for Huitfeldt, på tross av at hans
+overordnede, sjefen for Økokrim, har meldt seg inhabil i saken. Dette
+er litt rart. I veilednigen
+«<a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/krd/vedlegg/komm/veiledere/habilitet_i_kommuner_og_fylkeskommuner.pdf">Habilitet
+i kommuner og fylkeskommuner</a>» av Kommunal- og regionaldepartementet
+forteller de hva som gjelder, riktig nok gjelder veiledningen ikke for
+Økokrim som jo ikke er kommune eller fylkeskommune, men jeg får ikke
+inntrykk av at dette er regler som kun gjelder for kommune og
+fylkeskommune:
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>«<strong>2.1 Oversikt over inhabilitetsgrunnlagene</strong>
+
+<p>De alminnelige reglene om inhabilitet for den offentlige
+forvaltningen er gitt i
+<a href="https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1967-02-10/KAPITTEL_2#KAPITTEL_2">forvaltningsloven
+§§ 6 til 10</a>. Forvaltningslovens hovedregel om inhabilitet framgår
+av § 6. Her er det gitt tre ulike grunnlag som kan føre til at en
+tjenestemann eller folkevalgt blir inhabil. I § 6 første ledd
+bokstavene a til e er det oppstilt konkrete tilknytningsforhold mellom
+tjenestemannen og saken eller sakens parter som automatisk fører til
+inhabilitet. Annet ledd oppstiller en skjønnsmessig regel om at
+tjenestemannen også kan bli inhabil etter en konkret vurdering av
+inhabilitetsspørsmålet, der en lang rekke momenter kan være
+relevante. I tredje ledd er det regler om såkalt avledet
+inhabilitet. Det vil si at en underordnet tjenestemann blir inhabil
+fordi en overordnet er inhabil.»</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Loven sier ganske enkelt «Er den overordnede tjenestemann ugild,
+kan avgjørelse i saken heller ikke treffes av en direkte underordnet
+tjenestemann i samme forvaltningsorgan.» Jeg antar tanken er at en
+underordnet vil stå i fare for å tilpasse sine konklusjoner til det
+overordnet vil ha fordel av, for å fortsatt ha et godt forhold til sin
+overordnede. Men jeg er ikke jurist og forstår nok ikke kompliserte
+juridiske vurderinger. For å sitere «Kamerat Napoleon» av George
+Orwell: «Alle dyr er like, men noen dyr er likere enn andre».
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Invidious add-on for Kodi 20</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Invidious_add_on_for_Kodi_20.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Invidious_add_on_for_Kodi_20.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2023 19:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I still enjoy <a href="https://kodi.tv/">Kodi</a> and
+<a href="https://libreelec.tv/">LibreELEC</a> as my multimedia center
+at home. Sadly two of the services I really would like to use from
+within Kodi are not easily available. The most wanted add-on would be
+one making <a href="https://archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a>
+available, and it has
+<a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:Internet_Archive">not been
+working</a> for many years. The second most wanted add-on is one
+using <a href="https://invidious.io/">the Invidious privacy enhanced
+Youtube frontent</a>. A plugin for this has been partly working, but
+not been kept up to date in the Kodi add-on repository, and its
+upstream seem to have given it up in April this year, when the git
+repository was closed. A few days ago I got tired of this sad state
+of affairs and decided to
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kodi-invidious-plugin">have
+a go at improving the Invidious add-on</a>. As
+<a href="https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/3872">Google has
+already attacked</a> the Invidious concept, so it need all the support
+if can get. My small contribution here is to improve the service
+status on Kodi.</p>
+
+<p>I added support to the Invidious add-on for automatically picking a
+working Invidious instance, instead of requiring the user to specify
+the URL to a specific instance after installation. I also had a look
+at the set of patches floating around in the various forks on github,
+and decided to clean up at least some of the features I liked and
+integrate them into my new release branch. Now the plugin can handle
+channel and short video items in search results. Earlier it could
+only handle single video instances in the search response. I also
+brushed up the set of metadata displayed a bit, but hope I can figure
+out how to get more relevant metadata displayed.</p>
+
+<p>Because I only use Kodi 20 myself, I only test on version 20 and am
+only motivated to ensure version 20 is working. Because of API changes
+between version 19 and 20, I suspect it will fail with earlier Kodi
+versions.</p>
+
+<p>I already
+<a href="https://github.com/xbmc/repo-plugins/pull/4363">asked to have
+the add-on added</a> to the official Kodi 20 repository, and is
+waiting to heard back from the repo maintainers.</p>
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
</item>
<item>
- <title>Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook almost done</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
-of the Norwegian translation for
-"<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
-Handbook</a>" is now almost completed. After many months of proof
-reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
-to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
-and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com. While it is
-still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
-<a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
-hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
-<a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">the Buster
-edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
-
-<p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
-with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
-I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
+ <title>What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>With yesterdays
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
+12 Bookworm</a>, I am happy to know the
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is available for a wider audience.
+I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
+about some of the programs connecting to the Internet. Some programs
+are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
+clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
+were more dubious. For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
+the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
+blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it. Another
+surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
+mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
+web pages. This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
+always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
+Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
+use Gnome). It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
+permissions. Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
+any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
+a time sensitive gaming session.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
+to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
+OpenSnitch (only <tt>apt install opensnitch</tt> away in Debian
+Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
+your desktop machine.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
+is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
+the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
+depending in content in /proc/. This should enter unstable fairly
+soon.</p>
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2023-06-12</strong>: I got a tip about
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
+issues in Free Software</a> and the
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
+channel</a> discussing these topics.</p>
+
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 4 Jul 2020 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
-"<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
-Handbook</a>" was published. This was based on Debian Jessie. Now a
-new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready. Work on the
-updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
-now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
-texts being translated. A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
-but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
-
-<p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
-help with the proof reading. The translation uses
-<a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/">the
-hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
-submit improvements and suggestions. There is also a proof readers
-PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
-way.</p>
+ <title>wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 19 May 2023 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
+gas, electricity or heat distribution meters. The
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
+(EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
+to talk to and collect meter data. I ran into this standard when I
+wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
+free software that could do the job. The meters in question broadcast
+encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
+part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor. With this
+in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
+graphing.</p>
+
+<p>The free software systems in question,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
+read the messages from a software defined radio, and
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
+decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
+and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters. I got in touch
+with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
+the packages via Debian. I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
+Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
+assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
+sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive. Sadly we completed
+it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
+(Bookworm). The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue. It
+will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
+find a solution soon.</p>
+
+<p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
+standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
+packages.</p>
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
</item>
<item>
- <title>Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 6 Jun 2020 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix
-User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
-<a href="https://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a> magazine
-<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/">;login:</a>
-several times a year. I rarely have time to read all the articles,
-but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
-knowledge passed on there. I even carry the latest issue with me most
-of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
-spare minutes.</p>
-
-<p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
-"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
-Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service</a>" with a
-marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
-The idea is as simple as it is powerful. By introducing a new
-socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
-handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
-support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
-system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
-systems used. Instead of doing this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
-would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
-when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
-
-<p>The project has set up the
-<a href="https://securesocketapi.org/">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
-web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
-associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
-<a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa">ssa</a> and
-<a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon">ssa-daemon</a>.
-Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
-so its copyright status is unclear. A
-<a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2">request to solve
-this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
-
-<p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
-understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
-and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
-would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
-up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
-wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
-library.</p>
-
-<p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
-secure network connections. :)</p>
-
+ <title>The 2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 14 May 2023 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days. A lot of
+patches and issues have seen activity on
+<a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
+pages</a> recently. A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
+over at the <a href="https://tormach.com/">Tormach</a> headquarter in
+Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway. If you
+wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+"LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
+machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
+cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to 9 axes or
+joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-274NGC) as input. It has
+several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
+interactive development)."
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June 16th
+to 18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
+to LinuxCNC. Up to date information about the gathering can be found
+in
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
+developer mailing list thread</a> where the gathering was announced.
+Thanks to the good people at
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
+<a href="https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro</a> and
+<a href="https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation</a>, we
+have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
+traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to join the
+gathering, get in touch.</p>
+
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Bompenge-Norge, med noen tall fra bompengekalkulator</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bompenge_Norge__med_noen_tall_fra_bompengekalkulator.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bompenge_Norge__med_noen_tall_fra_bompengekalkulator.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 1 Jun 2020 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Det er tett med sensorstasjoner langs veinettet i Norge, som
-registrerer hvilke kjøretøy som passerer eller tar bilde av de som
-drar forbi. I følge
-<a href="https://vegkart.atlas.vegvesen.no/">Vegvesenets nasjonale
-veidatabank (NVDB)</a>, er det 353 bomstasjoner langs det norske
-veinettet. 21 i nordnorge, 48 i trøndelagsområdet, 13 på
-nordvestlandet, 91 i bergenstraktene og 180 på østlandsområdet. I
-tillegg finnes det et utall overvåkningskamera og noen titalls
-RFID-avlesere for bompengebrikker som samler inn informasjon om hvilke
-biler som befinner seg hvor i landet. For ikke å glemme alle
-mobilbasestasjoner som registrerer hvor brukere av mobilnettverket
-befinner seg. De er ikke tema i dag.</p>
-
-<p>De som kjører mye har interesse av å vite hvor mye bompenger det vil
-koste å kjøre fra et sted til et annet, og dette behovet har aktørene
-bak <a href="https://bompengekalkulator.no/">Bompengekalkulatoren</a>
-tatt sikte på å tilby i markedet. Fornuftig nok har de også en
-gratistjeneste, slik at de får frivillige til å gi innspill om feil i
-datagrunnlaget. Jeg ble nylig nysgjerring på hvor mye det til koste å
-kjøre på kryss og tvers i Norge, og valgte meg ut en teststrekning fra
-Oslo til Tromsø for å se hvilke beløp som gjelder.</p>
-
-<p>Bompengekalkulatoren viser frem flere rutealternativer for et gitt
-reisesøk, og i dette tilfellet, for reise fra Oslo Sentralstasjon til
-Tromsø sentrum, viser den tre alternativ. Merk, disse tallene gjelder
-bensindrevet personbil. En kan velge takstkategori i
-webgrensesnittet. Det ene rutealternativet er E6 gjennom Norge, de to
-andre er E45 og E4 gjennom sverige. E45 er innlandsruten i Sverige,
-motorvei gjennom store skoger som i følge kalkulatoren skal ta 22
-timer og 26 minutter med norsk bompengebeløp på 164 kroner. Jeg har
-mine tvil til om datasettet til Bompengekalkulatoren har svenske
-bomstasjoner, så ta dette beløpet med en klype salt. E4 er veien
-langs Bottenviken og mer befolket område, og skal ta 22 timer og 50
-minutter til en norsk bompengebeløp på 71 kroner. Den norske ruten
-langs E6 skal derimot ta 23 timer og 16 minutter og beløpe seg til 664
-kroner. Beløpene er uten autopass-brikke, slik at en slipper å få
-bilens posisjon registrert i alle bompengebrikkeavleserne som ikke
-også er bomstasjoner. For trailere er bompengekostnaden 2-3 ganger så
-høy som for personbil. I tillegg til pengebeløpet, som faktureres
-etterskuddsvis og de siste årene har blitt umulig å gjøre opp kontant
-på stedet, så kommer kostnaden med å få sine personopplysninger samlet
-inn, lagret og gjort tilgjengelig for fremmede på ubestemt tid. Jeg
-ser på den kostnaden som mye høyere en pengebeløpet som
-faktureres.</p>
-
-<p>For en tilsvarende tur fra Oslo til Bergen, så forteller
-kalkulatoren at raskeste vei er riksvei 7 på 7 timer 4 minutter med
-bompengebeløp 409 kroner. Alternativene listet opp er E134 på 8 timer
-37 minutter med bompengebeløp 318 kroner og fylkesivei 40 på 7 timer
-30 minutter med beløp 331. Det kan kanskje være greit å sjekke ut før
-en setter seg i bilen hvor ens personopplysninger vil bli samlet inn
-og lagret 5 fem år, når en velger hvilken rute en går for.</p>
+ <title>OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 13 May 2023 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A bit delayed,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> package in Debian now got the
+latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm. Because it depend on a
+package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
+testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
+actually working, so the migration was delayed. A bug in the package
+dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
+(opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
+installed by default. I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
+his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
+connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
+offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me. If you
+too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
+Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing <tt>apt
+install opensnitch</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.</p>
+
+<p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
+Debian. Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
+suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
+header files to get it working.</p>
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>More reliable vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.9)</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I am very happy to report that a more reliable
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent">VLC
-bittorrent plugin</a> was just uploaded into debian. This fixes a
-couple of crash bugs in the plugin, hopefully making the VLC
-experience even better when streaming directly from a bittorrent
-source. The package is currently in Debian unstable, but should be
-available in Debian testing in two days. To test it, simply install
-it like this:</p>
+ <title>Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 23 Apr 2023 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
+it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
+transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
+stuff I need to write. The background is that long drives often bring
+up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
+of the question while driving. With the release of
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper</a>, this
+seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
+go. OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
+audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
+audio recording. It handle multiple languages and according to its
+creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
+one. I have not tested the latter feature. It can either use the CPU
+or a GPU with CUDA support. As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
+limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards. I have few of those, as
+they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
+the GPU option. While looking into the matter, I did discover some
+work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
+the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
+spent much time looking into GPU support yet. I've so far used an old
+X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
+CPU.</p>
+
+<p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
+under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
+ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
+system locally on my own computers. The only sensible approach to me
+is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
+to upload the needed packages into Debian. Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
+discovered that only three packages were missing,
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken</a>,
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton</a>, and
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper</a>. For a while
+I also believed
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python</a> was
+needed, but as its
+<a href="https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
+seem to have vanished</a> I found it safer
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
+whisper</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
+into Debian. I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
+<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
+Learning Team</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
+packages. Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
+that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
+versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
+Bookworm is released.</p>
+
+<p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
+<a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
+queue</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
+Bookworm is released. An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
+network models used by Whisper. The default behaviour of Whisper is
+to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
+<tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt> on first invocation. This obviously would
+fail <a href="https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
+deserted island test of free software</a> as the Debian packages would
+be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
+powered computer on a deserted island.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
+mirror system. This is problematic, as the models are very large
+files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
+infrastructure around the globe. The strain would be even higher if
+the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
+not. The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
+for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
+either, is 462 MiB (deb is 414 MiB). The medium model, which to me
+seem to handle English speech fairly well is 1.5 GiB (deb is 1.3 GiB)
+and the large model is 2.9 GiB (deb is 2.6 GiB). I would assume
+everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
+highest quality. I believe the models themselves would have to go
+into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
+including any useful source code for updating the models. The
+"source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
+consist of "680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
+data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
+unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public. In other
+words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
+Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.</p>
+
+<p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
+model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
+is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
+archive. In any case I wrote build rules for a
+<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
+Whisper model package</a> and
+<a href="https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
+Whisper code base</a> to prefer shared files under <tt>/usr/</tt> and
+<tt>/var/</tt> over user specific files in <tt>~/.cache/whisper/</tt>
+to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
+possibility. One solution might be to include only one of the models
+(small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
+download the others from the Internet. Not quite sure what to do
+here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).</p>
+
+<p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
+clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm. I
+selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
+would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
+missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
+to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
+Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
+first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
+then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
+and one of the models:</p>
<p><pre>
-apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
+curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
+ -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
+mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list &lt;&lt;EOF
+deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
+deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
+EOF
+apt update
+apt install openai-whisper
</pre></p>
-<p>After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
-downloaded live via bittorrent like this:
-
-<p><pre>
-vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Glass_201703_archive.torrent
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>It also support magnet links and local .torrent files.</p>
-
+<p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
+computer than my own. With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
+a 2 minute 40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
+model. This took 11 minutes and around 2.2 GiB of RAM. Transcribing
+the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in 77 minutes
+using around 5.2 GiB of RAM. My test machine had too little memory to
+test the large model, which I believe require 11 GiB of RAM. In
+short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
+for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.</p>
+
+<p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.</p>
+
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Yvan Masson</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It has been way too long since my last interview, but as the
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
-community is still active, and new people keep showing up on the IRC
-channel <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> and
-<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">the debian-edu mailing
-list</a>, I decided to give it another go. I was hoping someone else
-might pick up the idea and run with it, but this has not happened as
-far as I can tell, so here we are… This time the announcement of a new
-free software tool to
-<a href="https://framagit.org/Yvan-Masson/WhosWho">create a school year
-book</a> triggered my interest, and I decided to learn more about its
-author.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>My name is Yvan MASSON, I live in France. I have my own one person
-business in computer services. The work consist of visiting my
-customers (person's home, local authority, small business) to give
-advise, install computers and software, fix issues, and provide
-computing usage training. I spend the rest of my time enjoying my
-family and promoting free software.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What is your approach for promoting free
-software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>When I think that free software could be suitable for someone, I
-explain what it is, with simple words, give a few known examples, and
-explain that while there is no fee it is a viable alternative in many
-situations. Most people are receptive when you explain how it is
-better (I simplify arguments here, I know that it is not so simple):
-Linux works on older hardware, there are no viruses, and the software
-can be audited to ensure user is not spied upon. I think the most
-important is to keep a clear but moderated speech: when you try to
-convince too much, people feel attacked and stop listening.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I can not remember how I first heard of Skolelinux / Debian Edu,
-but probably on planet.debian.org. As I have been working for a
-school, I have interest in this type of project.
-
-<p>The school I am involved in is a school for "children" between 14
-and 18 years old. The French government has recommended free software
-since 2012, but they do not always use free software themselves. The
-school computers are still using the Windows operating system, but all
-of them have the classic set of free software: Firefox ESR,
-LibreOffice (with the excellent extension Grammalecte that indicates
-French grammatical errors), SumatraPDF, Audacity, 7zip, KeePass2, VLC,
-GIMP, Inkscape…
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>It is free software! Built on Debian, I am sure that users are not
-spied upon, and that it can run on low end hardware. This last point
-is very important, because we really need to improve "green IT". I do
-not know enough about Skolelinux / Debian Edu to tell how it is better
-than another free software solution, but what I like is the "all in
-one" solution: everything has been thought of and prepared to ease
-installation and usage.</p>
-
-<p>I like Free Software because I hate using something that I can not
-understand. I do not say that I can understand everything nor that I
-want to understand everything, but knowing that someone / some company
-intentionally prevents me from understanding how things work is really
-unacceptable to me.</p>
-
-<p>Secondly, and more importantly, free software is a requirement to
-prevent abuses regarding human rights and environmental care.
-Humanity can not rely on tools that are in the hands of small group of
-people.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Again, I don't know this project enough. Maybe a dedicated website?
-Debian wiki works well for documentation, but is not very appealing to
-someone discovering the project. Also, as Skolelinux / Debian Edu uses
-OpenLDAP, it probably means that Windows workstations cannot use
-centralized authentication. Maybe the project could use Samba as an
-Active Directory domain controller instead, allowing Windows desktop
-usage when necessary.</p>
-
-<p>(Editors note: In fact Windows workstations can
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Buster/HowTo/Samba">use
-the centralized authentication in a Debian Edu setup</a>, at least for
-some versions of Windows, but the fact that this is not well known can
-be seen as an indication of the need for better documentation and
-marketing. :)</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Nothing original: Debian testing/sid with Gnome desktop, Firefox,
-Thunderbird, LibreOffice…</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Every effort to spread free software into schools is important,
-whatever it is. But I think, at least where I live, that IT
-professionals maintaining schools networks are still very "Microsoft
-centric". Schools will use any working solution, but they need people
-to install and maintain it. How to make these professionals sensitive
-about free software and train them with solutions like Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux is a really good question :-)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago,
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
-wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
-client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication. It
-handle both messages, audio and video. It uses distributed hash
-tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
-other, which in my book is a plus. I mentioned briefly that it could
-also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
-educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
-conferencing solution. I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
-software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
-license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
-to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
-Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
-
-<p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
-password set on the room. The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
-(approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
-conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
-is not a great. I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
-without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
-until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base. But
-another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected. I
-could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
-dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
-Zoom. I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
-Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
-through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
-be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
-connecting via SIP. There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
-Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end. I got help from a
-very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part. And being a
-very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
-Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
-connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
-
-<p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now. The
-trick is already
-<a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
-from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
-password. What is most surprising about this is that the
-automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
-connect via SIP do not mention this. The SIP address to use normally
-consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
-of the Zoom SIP gateway. But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
-room ID in front of the at sign. The format is "<tt>[Meeting
-ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can hear see how you
-can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
-presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
-The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
-then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-<tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
-recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
-
+ <title>rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux - nice free software</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 7 Apr 2023 23:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
+scanner for my software defined radio. Just for fun I tried to locate
+the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
+the frequencies to see what is in use. I've tried to find a useful
+program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
+tool. This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
+found a description of
+<a href="https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
+over at the Kali site</a>, and was able to track down
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
+Kali package git repository</a> to build a deb package for the
+scanner. Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
+at least in Debian Bullseye. Two runtime dependencies,
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis</a>
+and
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr</a>
+had to be built and installed separately. Luckily '<tt>gbp
+buildpackage</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
+to be manually built. The end result worked out of the box after
+installation.</p>
+
+<p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
+scanner was functioning. But when I tried to scan every frequency
+from 100 to 1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
+completion. After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
+used rejected frequencies above 948 MHz, triggering a unreported
+exception breaking the scan. Changing the scan to end at 957 worked
+better. I similarly found the lower limit to be around 15, and ended
+up with the following full scan:</p>
+
+<p><a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width="100%"></a></p>
+
+<p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
+just fine. I ended up with around 477k CVS lines with dB level for
+the given frequency.</p>
+
+<p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-8 encoding issue in the
+python code. Will see if I can find time to send a patch
+<a href="https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream</a>
+later to fix this exception:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
+ save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
+ handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
+TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line 485, in __on_save
+ save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
+ File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line 408, in save_plot
+ handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
+TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
+</pre>
+
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</item>
<item>
- <title>GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The curiosity got the better of me when
-<a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
-reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
-and a few days later it was reported that
-<a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
-tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
-learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
-already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
-Debian</a>. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
-transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
-Studio to build binaries.</p>
-
-<p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
-quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
-taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A
-new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
-
-<p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
-introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to
-learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself,
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
-page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
-
-<p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
-standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
-test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible
-to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
-very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If
-you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</p>
-
+ <title>OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
+Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
+application firewall OpenSnitch</a> is now available in Debian
+Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.</p>
+
+<p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
+machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
+ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
+network or the Internet. If some background daemon is trying to dial
+home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
+default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
+up. A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
+in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
+use the network.</p>
+
+<p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
+had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
+package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
+at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
+week after the first upload. It is now team maintained under the Go
+language team umbrella. A few fixes to the default setup is only in
+Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.</p>
+
+<p>During testing I ran into an
+<a href="https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
+with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing</a>, which was quickly
+resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
+change. I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
+use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
+newer eBPF module that can be used. The reason is simply that
+upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
+OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
+which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
+Debian. We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
+package. It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
+build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
+kernel source.</p>
+
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Totalovervåkning av innbyggernes bevegelser - nei takk!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Jeg er blitt spurt hva jeg synes om lansering av smittestopp-appen,
-overvåkningsløsningen lansert av Folkehelseinstituttet,
-Simula-senteret og Regjeringen i dag, fulgt av klare trusler fra
-regjeringen om konsekvenser hvis befolkningen ikke tar den i bruk.
-Rekker ikke skrive noe fyldig om temaet, men det er klart for meg at
-den utraderer retten til privatliv samt utgjør en personlig
-sikkerhetsrisiko for alle som tar den i bruk. Bare det er nok til at
-det fremstår som en svært dårlig ide å bli med på denne "dugnaden".
-Det finnes andre og bedre tilnærminger enn den valgt av FHI. Har de
-valgt sin tilnærming for å sikre seg nok et datasett i den fremtidige
-ehelse-portalen? Potensialet for misbruk av informasjon samlet inn av
-appen er for stort, effekten på neste krise for klar og gevinsten for
-liten.</p>
-
-<p>For å si det med forhenværende leder i Datatilsynet, Georg Apenes,
-som skrev i en kronikk den gang Datatilsynet vernet
-privatsfæren at
-«<a href="https://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/rent-mel-i-bilen/66333882">SENTRALT
-I en liberal forestillingsverden finner vi aksept av borgerens rett
-til å kunne velge å være i fred; å være u-iakttatt, uregistrert og
-anonym</a>». Det er ikke uten grunn han startet kronikken med
-«Personvern et fremmedord i enkelte av de statsorganene som samler
-inn, oppbevarer og bruker personopplysninger». Der har nok
-statsorganene bare blitt dårligere på 13 år.</p>
-
-<p>Det er jo også verdt å merke seg at personvernrådet i EU (EDPB)
-mener smittestopp-appen
-<a href="https://nrkbeta.no/2020/04/16/personvernrad-i-eu-mener-norsk-app-bryter-med-viktig-personvernprinsipp/">opererer
-i strid med prinsippet om dataminimering</a>. Også de ser at det
-finnes mye bedre måter å gjøre dette på.</p>
-
-
-<p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
-det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
-til min adresse
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.
-Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff