<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-06-06 23:55</div>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/2_Spykee_roboter_i_hus__n___skal_det_lekes.html">2 Spykee-roboter i hus, nå skal det lekes</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-18 13:30</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
-scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
-keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
-needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
-differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
-this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
-script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
-
-<p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
-script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
-COLUMNS):</p>
+<p>Jeg kjøpte nettopp to
+<a href="http://www.spykee-robot.com/">Spykee</a>-roboter, for test og
+leking. Kjøpte to da det var så billige, og gir meg mulighet til å
+eksperimentere uten å være veldig redd for å ødelegge alt ved å bytte
+ut firmware og slikt. Oppdaget at lekebutikken på Bryn senter hadde
+en liten stabel på lager som de ikke hadde klart å selge ut etter
+fjorårets juleinnkjøp, og var villig til å selge for en femtedel av
+vanlig pris. Jeg, Ronny og Jarle har skaffet oss restbeholdningen, og
+det blir morsomt å se hva vi får ut av dette.</p>
+
+<p>Roboten har belter styrt av to motorer, kamera, høytaler, mikrofon
+og wifi-tilkobling. Det hele styrt av en GPL-lisensiert databoks som
+jeg mistenker kjører linux. Firmware-kildekoden ble visst publisert i
+mai. Eneste utfordringen er at kontroller-programvaren kun finnes til
+Windows, men det må en kunne jobbe seg rundt når vi har kildekoden til
+firmwaren. :)</p>
-<blockquote><pre>
-DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
-previous=N
-PREVLEVEL=
-RUNLEVEL=
-runlevel=S
-UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
-UPSTART_INSTANCE=
-UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
-script.</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
-previous=N
-PREVLEVEL=N
-RUNLEVEL=S
-runlevel=S
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
-sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
-to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
-
-<p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
-looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
-choice.</p>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">Wikipedia-oppføring</a></li>
+<li><a href=http://www.spykeeworld.com/spykee/US/freeSoftware.html">Nedlasting av firmware-kilden</a></li>
+</ul>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-06-06 14:15</div>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-15 22:20</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>Via the
-<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
-of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
-<a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
-Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
-following the standards wars of today.</p>
+<p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
+<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
+to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
+well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
+should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
+long time.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-06-03 12:05</div>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-09 20:15</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
-to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
-information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
-included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
-the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
+<p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
+Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
+configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
+mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
+generated configuration.</p>
+
+<p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
+Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
+without any manual configuration.</p>
+
+<p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
+the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
+asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
+layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
+accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
+popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
+these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
+after around 50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
+installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
+ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
+username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
+been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
+same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop. At no point during
+this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
+required configuration was dynamically detected using information
+fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
+use.</p>
+
+<p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
+list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
+working properly out of the box:</p>
-<blockquote><pre>
-maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
- vendor count
- Dell Computer Corporation 1
- PowerEdge 1750 1
- IBM 1
- eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
- Intel 2
- [no-dmi-info] 3
-maintainer:~#
-</pre></blockquote>
+<ul>
+<li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
+<li>Web proxy URL.</li>
+<li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
+<li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
+<li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
+<li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
+<li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
+</ul>
-<p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
-provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
-information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
-machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
-option to list the individual machines.</p>
-
-<p>A larger list is
-<a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
-city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
-provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
-are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
-their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
-it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
-collector.</p>
+<p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)</p>
+
+<p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
+machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
+administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
+but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
+and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
+
+<p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
+When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
+http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
+configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
+/etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
+hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
+it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
+proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
+
+<p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
+configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
+installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
+not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
+LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
+attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
+determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
+namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
+LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
+the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
+object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
+such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
+search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
+for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
+look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
+current DNS domain is used.</p>
+
+<p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
+for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
+found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
+Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
+server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
+save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
+different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
+log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
+will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
+network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
+non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
+supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
+should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
+
+<p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
+located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
+consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
+attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
+path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
+form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
+DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
+smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
+edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
+to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
+do for now. :)</p>
+
+<p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
+into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
+more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
+client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
+existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
+Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
+detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
+before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
+implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html">Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-06-02 23:45</div>
+ <div class="title"><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></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-08 21:20</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
-<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
-med sykkel</a>... Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
-fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
+<p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
+Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
+Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
+access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
+knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
+mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
+struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
+directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
+work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
+underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
+file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
+and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
+want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
+
+<p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
+with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
+OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
+it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
+help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
-<p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
-effekt på området der?</p>
+<pre>
+/*
+ * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
+ * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
+ * directory.
+ * License: GPL v2 or later
+ *
+ * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
+ * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
+*/
+
+#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
+#define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
+#define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
+
+#define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
+
+#include <errno.h>
+#include <fcntl.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <sys/file.h>
+#include <sys/stat.h>
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+
+#ifdef TEST_SQLITE
+/*
+ * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
+ * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
+ * below.
+ * See also <URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
+ */
+#include <sqlite3.h>
+#define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
+ "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
+int test_sqlite_open(void) {
+ char *zErrMsg;
+ char *name = "testsqlite.db";
+ sqlite3 *db=NULL;
+ unlink(name);
+ int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
+ if( rc ){
+ printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return -1;
+ }
+
+ /* create tables */
+ rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL, 0, &zErrMsg);
+ if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
+ printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return -1;
+ }
+ printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
+ sqlite3_close(db);
+ return 0;
+}
+#endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
+
+/*
+ * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
+ * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003. This is
+ * done in the sqlite3 library.
+ * See also
+ * <URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
+ * POSIX specification
+ * <URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
+ */
+int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
+ struct flock fl;
+ char *name = "testsqlite.db";
+ unlink(name);
+ int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
+ printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
+
+ fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
+ fl.l_pid = getpid();
+ printf(" Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741826;
+ fl.l_len = 510;
+ fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 1;
+ fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741826;
+ fl.l_len = 510;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ printf(" Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
+ fl.l_start = 1073741824;
+ fl.l_len = 2;
+ fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
+ if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
+
+ close(fd);
+ return 0;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
+ * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
+ * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
+ * slowing down file operations.
+ */
+int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
+#define LEVELS 5
+ char *path = strdup("test");
+ char *dirs[LEVELS];
+ int level;
+ printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
+ for (level = 0; level < LEVELS; level++) {
+ char *newpath = NULL;
+ if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
+ printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
+ path, strerror(errno));
+ break;
+ }
+ asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
+ free(path);
+ path = newpath;
+ }
+ return 0;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
+ * KDE.
+ */
+int test_symlinks(void) {
+ printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
+ unlink("symlink");
+ if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
+ printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
+ return 0;
+}
+
+int main(int argc, char **argv) {
+ printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
+ test_symlinks();
+ test_subdirectory_creation();
+#ifdef TEST_SQLITE
+ test_sqlite_open();
+#endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
+ test_gcompris_locking();
+ return 0;
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>When everything is working, it should print something like
+this:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
+info: testing symlink creation
+info: testing subdirectory creation
+info: sqlite worked
+info: testing fcntl locking
+ Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+ Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+ Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
+ Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
+ Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
+ Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
+</pre>
+
+<p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
+of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
+read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
+the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
+CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
+meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
+OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
+not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
+it. :)</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-06-01 17:05</div>
+ <div class="title"><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></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-07 14:45</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
-start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
-problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
-initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
-wait.</p>
-
-<p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
-against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
-that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
-kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
-
-<p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
-problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
-distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
-maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
-the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
-while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
-distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
-but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
-
-<p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
+<p>A few days ago, I
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
+to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
+while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
+noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
+university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
+that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
+connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
+itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
+around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
+
+<p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
+workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
+university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
+servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
+configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
+a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
+In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
+this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
+proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
+/etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
+configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
+a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
+network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
+gave it a IP address.</p>
+
+<p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
+entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
+_ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
+server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
+namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
+pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
+algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
+uppercase version of $domain.</p>
+
+<p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
+directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
+Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
+the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
+had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
+but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
+
+<p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
+roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
+connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
+authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
+Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
+with UID and GID values.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
+Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-27 23:55</div>
+ <div class="title"><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></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-08-03 23:30</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
-The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
-issues are known and should be solved:
-
-<p><ul>
-
-<li>The wicd package seen to
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
-parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
-seem to be on the case.</li>
-
-<li>The nvidia X driver seem to
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
-triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
-maintainer is on the case.</li>
-
-<li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
-sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
-sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
-/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
-sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
-workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
-sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
-
-</ul></p>
-
-<p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
-solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
-some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
-which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
-
-<p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
-the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
-list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
-
-<p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
+<p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
+similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
+University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
+hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
+infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
+Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
+servers.</p>
+
+<p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
+changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
+/etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
+(/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
+Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
+for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
+coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
+.uio.no.</p>
+
+<p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
+Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
+workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
+so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
+only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
+university servers.</p>
+
+<p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
+fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
+allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
+setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
+the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
+uses.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-22 21:30</div>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-07-27 23:50</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
-found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
-working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
-definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
-
-<p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
-include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
-get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
-firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
-install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
-are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
-an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
-enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
-debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
-Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
-to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
-/cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
-found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
-going to work.</p>
-
-<p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
-look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
-the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
-packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
-"external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
-/cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
-solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
-look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
-provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
-to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
-Edu.</p>
-
-<p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
-activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
-hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
-run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
-license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
-solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
-contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
+<p>I discovered this while doing
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
+testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>. A few packages
+in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
+that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
+some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
+
+<p>An example is from todays
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
+of KDE using aptitude</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
+causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
+package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
+dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
+ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
+because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
+
+<p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
+ perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
+ Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
+dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
+ dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
+hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
+and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
+failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
+packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
+the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
+of dependency loops.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
+tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
+dependencies
+<a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
+is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
+
+<p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
+apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
+dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
+it.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html">Magnetstripeinnhold i billetter fra Flytoget og Hurtigruten</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-21 16:00</div>
+ <div class="title"><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></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-07-27 17:45</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>For en stund tilbake kjøpte jeg en magnetkortleser for å kunne
-titte på hva som er skrevet inn på magnetstripene til ulike kort. Har
-ikke hatt tid til å analysere mange kort så langt, men tenkte jeg
-skulle dele innholdet på to kort med mine lesere.</p>
+<p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
+with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
+completed.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
+release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
+install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
+of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
+user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
+longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
+Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
+language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
+
+<p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
+artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
+and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
+
+<p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
+work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
+much.</p>
+
+<p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
+<ul>
+ <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
+ combination with some new artwork
+ <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
+ <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
+ <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
+ <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
+ <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
+ <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
+ <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
+ <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
+ <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
+</ul></li>
+<li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
+ Enabled for:
+<ul>
+ <li>PAM
+ <li>LDAP
+ <li>IMAP
+ <li>SMTP (sender verification)
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
+<li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
+ fetched from LDAP.</li>
+<li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
+<li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
+</ul>
+<p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
-<p>For noen dager siden tok jeg flyet til Harstad og Hurtigruten til
-Bergen. Flytoget fra Oslo S til flyplassen ga meg en billett med
-magnetstripe. Påtrykket finner jeg følgende informasjon:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
+ scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
+ for testing.</li>
+<li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
+ and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
+ clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
+<li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
+<li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
+<li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
+<li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
+ netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
+<li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
+ some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
+ jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
+<li>Some packages lack translations. See
+ http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
+ and help out with translations.</li>
+</ul>
-<pre>
-Flytoget Airport Express Train
-
-Fra - Til : Oslo Sentralstasjon
-Kategori : Voksen
-Pris : Nok 170,00
-Herav mva. 8,00% : NOK 12,59
-Betaling : Kontant
-Til - Fra : Oslo Lufthavn
-Utstedt: : 08.05.10
-Gyldig Fra-Til : 08.05.10-07.11.10
-Billetttype : Enkeltbillett
-
-102-1015-100508-48382-01-08
-</pre>
+<p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
-<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
-<tt>;E?+900120011=23250996541068112619257138248441708433322932704083389389062603279671261502492655?</tt>.
-Aner ikke hva innholdet representerer, og det er lite overlapp mellom
-det jeg ser trykket på billetten og det jeg ser av tegn i
-magnetstripen. Håper det betyr at de bruker kryptografiske metoder
-for å gjøre det vanskelig å forfalske billetter.</p>
+<ul>
+<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>
+<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>
+<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
+</ul>
+<p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
-<p>Den andre billetten er fra Hurtigruten, der jeg mistenker at
-strekkoden på fronten er mer brukt enn magnetstripen (det var i hvert
-fall den biten vi stakk inn i dørlåsen).</p>
+<ul>
+<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>
+<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>
+<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
+</ul>
-<p>Påtrykket forsiden er følgende:</p>
+<p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
+get closer to the final release.</p>
-<pre>
-Romnummer 727
-Hurtigruten
-Midnatsol
-Reinholdtsen
-Petter
-Bookingno: SAX69 0742193
-Harstad-Bergen
-Dep: 09.05.2010 Arr: 12.05.2010
-Lugar fra Risøyhamn
-Kost: FRO=4
-</pre>
+<p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
-<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
-<tt>;1316010007421930=00000000000000000000?+E?</tt>. Heller ikke her
-ser jeg mye korrespondanse mellom påtrykk og magnetstripe.</p>
+<ul>
+<li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
+<li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
+<ul>
+<li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
+<li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
+</ul>
+<p>How to report bugs:
+http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
+
+<p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
+</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-19 19:00</div>
+ <div class="title"><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></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-07-25 10:00</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
-Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
-package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
-into unstable. The
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
-package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
-passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
-package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
-hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
-
-<p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
-roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
-nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
-which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
-for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
-#485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
-libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
-care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
-
-<p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
-at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
-problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
-package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
-find time to make sure the next release will include both the
-Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
-and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
-
-<p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
-LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
-when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
-cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
-memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
-libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
-directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
-be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
-with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
-to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
-on the home directory servers.</p>
-
-<p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
-message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
-is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
-message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
-a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
-type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
+<p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
+been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
+Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
+authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
+getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
+
+<p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
+directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
+network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
+to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
+shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
+SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
+package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
+to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
+password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
+in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
+up. :)</p>
+
+<p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
+Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
+also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
+
+<p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
+to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
+sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
+the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
+it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
+time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
+still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
+release another day.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ 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>.
</div>
</div>
<div class="padding"></div>
<div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><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></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-14 22:40</div>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Digitale_restriksjonsmekanismer_fikk_meg_til____slutte____kj__pe_musikk.html">Digitale restriksjonsmekanismer fikk meg til å slutte å kjøpe musikk</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-07-22 23:50</div>
<div class="body">
-<p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
-Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
-Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
-expected, if I am to believe the
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
-on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
-with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
-remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
-detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
-The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
-version.</p>
-
-More information about
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
-based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
-currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
-problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-CONCURRENCY=none
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
-the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
-list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
+<p>For mange år siden slutte jeg å kjøpe musikk-CDer. Årsaken var at
+musikkbransjen var godt i gang med å selge platene sine med DRM som
+gjorde at jeg ikke fikk spilt av musikken jeg kjøpte på utstyret jeg
+hadde tilgjengelig, dvs. min datamaskin. Det var umulig å se på en
+plate om den var ødelagt eller ikke, og jeg hadde jo allerede en
+anseelig samling med plater, så jeg bestemme meg for å slutte å gi
+penger til en bransje som åpenbart ikke respekterte meg.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg har mange titalls dager med musikk på CD i dag. Det meste er
+lagt i et stort arkiv som kan spilles av fra husets datamaskiner (har
+ikke rukket rippe alt). Jeg ser dermed ikke behovet for å skaffe mer
+musikk. De fleste av mine favoritter er i hus, og jeg er dermed godt
+fornøyd.</p>
+
+<p>Hvis musikkbransjen ønsker mine penger, så må de demonstrere at de
+setter pris på meg som kunde, og ikke skremme meg bort med DRM og
+antydninger om at kundene er kriminelle.</p>
+
+<p>Filmbransjen er like ille, men mens musikk gjerne varer lenge, er
+filmer mer ferskvare. Har dermed ikke helt sluttet å kjøpe filmer, men
+holder meg til DVD-filmer som kan spilles av på mine Linuxbokser.
+Kommer neppe til å ta i bruk Blueray, og ei heller de nye DRM-greiene
+«Ultraviolet» som be annonsert her om dagen.</p>
</div>
<div class="tags">
- 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>.
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
</div>
</div>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
-<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (5)</a></li>
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (6)</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (24)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (10)</a></li>
+
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (35)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (24)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (40)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (35)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (56)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (1)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (6)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (8)</a></li>
+
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (3)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (2)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (1)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (2)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (5)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (66)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (72)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (74)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (94)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (12)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (14)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (11)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (15)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (10)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (8)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (11)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (3)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (12)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (13)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (6)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (7)</a></li>
</ul>
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