- <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>New in the Squeeze version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
-ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
-based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
-the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
-allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
-sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
-change the global proxy setting by editing
-<tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
-to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
-
-<p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
-In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
-simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
-{
- if (!isResolvable(host) ||
- isPlainHostName(host) ||
- dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
- return "DIRECT";
- else
- return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
-}
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
-ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
-the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
-would be used for
-<tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
-and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
-<tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
-fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
-javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
-able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
-library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
-is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
-use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
-known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
-
-<p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
-laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
-is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
-automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
-feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
-announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
-
-<p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
-or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
-could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
-and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
-distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
-proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
-first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
-ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
-the network setup changes.</p>
-
-<p>The WPAD system is documented in a
-<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
-draft</a> and a
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
-page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
+users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
+Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
+long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
+Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
+author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
+contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
+encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
+years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
+weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
+installations.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
+London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
+just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
+along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
+mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
+well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
+have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
+LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
+these things we decided to try it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
+from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
+goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
+would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
+low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
+that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
+Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
+proprietary software everywhere.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
+how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
+various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
+English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
+users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
+OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
+desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
+use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
+that counts...)</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
+and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
+the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
+applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
+constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
+XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
+iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
+longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
+realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
+putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
+first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
+
+<p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
+free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>