<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" />
+ <item>
+ <title>A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
+encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
+central control. It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
+activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth. At least
+I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
+details of every transaction are kept forever. This point is
+investigated in
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
+from December 2013, in the article
+"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
+Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
+Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
+Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. They
+analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
+addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
+of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
+money end up. This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
+our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
+activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
+Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
+flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
+address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
+we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
+thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
+mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
+tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
+large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
+from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
+
+<p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
+which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
+the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
+case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
+subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
+stolen bitcoins were deposited. Because such exchanges seem to serve
+as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
+few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
+money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
+present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
+</blockquote><p>
+
+<p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
+transaction log. The 2011 paper
+"<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
+the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
+summarized like this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+"Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
+complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
+public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
+attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
+public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
+users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
+a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
+allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
+this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
+derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
+two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
+complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
+anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
+techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
+an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
+market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
+is anonymous. It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites. Use
+cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
+sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</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&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
+find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
+analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
+useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
+the source. The company behind it provide
+<a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
+a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
+already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
+the Coverity system, and discovered that the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
+projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
+fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
+check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
+checking of the chrpath project</a>. It was
+added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
+these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
+error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
+of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
+is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
+the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
+<a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
+mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
+publish a new release. These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
+ <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.16 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a test suite check.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
+was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
+up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
+successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
+to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
+George</a>.</p>
+
+<!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
+life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
+student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
+Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
+voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
+a bit vacant right now however.</p>
+
+<p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
+(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
+around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
+it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
+network of that school together with a team of very interested and
+talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
+learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
+to help building another school's informational education concept from
+scratch.</p>
+
+<p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
+and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
+ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
+
+<p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
+and cycling.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
+booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
+have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
+own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
+"out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
+
+<p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
+<a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
+BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
+really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
+ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
+a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
+guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
+small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
+seemed rather uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
+mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
+reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
+basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
+works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
+in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
+without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
+from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
+have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
+and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
+server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
+notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
+and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
+it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
+tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
+that it rocks!</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
+politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
+operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
+will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
+school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
+this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
+too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
+answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
+other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
+can list a few points about that:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
+ <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
+ <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
+all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
+year.</p>
+
+<p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
+run text tools. I use
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
+text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
+based full-featured student management software with the two),
+<a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
+<a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
+coloured world called the WWW, I use
+<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
+(Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
+e-mail.</p>
+
+<p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
+are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
+least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
+kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
+which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
+Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
+Facebook now ;).</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
+side is what I have experienced.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
+that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
+grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
+to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
+see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
+students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
+desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
+they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
+that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
+software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
+networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
+not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
+already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
+if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
+that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
+plain criminal.</p>
+
+<p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
+method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
+founded an association named
+<a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
+just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
+area of free and open source software, for example the
+<a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
+Teckids and are the youth programme of
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
+Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
+- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
+aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
+and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
+of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
+the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
+their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
+Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
+clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
+it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
+who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
+We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
+open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
+software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
+group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
+Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
+
+<p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
+being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
+that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
+but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
+
+<!--
+
+> * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
+
+That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
+community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
+
+ <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
+ free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
+ of the decision makers above;
+ <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
+ knowledge about free software
+
+If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
+
+-->
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Helga 18. og 19. januar 2014 arrangeres
+<a href="http://makerfaireoslo.no/no/program/dugnadsnett">Oslo Maker
+Faire</a>, og <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnadsnett for
+alle</a> har fått plass! Planen er å ha et bord med en plakat der vi
+forteller om hva Dugnadsnett for alle er for noe, og et lite verksted
+der vi hjelper folk som er interessert i å få opp sin egen mesh-node.
+Jeg gleder meg til å se hvordan prosjektet blir mottatt der.</p>
+
+<p>Målet med dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo er å få på plass et datanett
+for kommunikasjon ved hjelp av radio-repeaterstasjoner (kalt
+mesh-noder) som gjør at en kan direkte kommunisere med slekt, venner
+og bekjente i Oslo via andre som deltar i dugnadsnettet, samt gjøre
+det mulig komme ut på internett via dugnadsnettet. Første delmål er å
+kunne sende SMS-meldinger vha. IP-telefoni løsningen
+<a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project</a> mellom
+deltagerne i Dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo. Formålet er å ta tilbake
+kontrollen over egen nett-infrastruktur og gjøre det dyrere å bedrive
+massiv innsamling av informasjon om borgernes bruk av datanett.</p>
+
+<p>Høres dette interessant ut? Bli med på prosjektet, fortell oss
+hvor du kunne tenke deg å sette opp en radio-repeater (slik at folk i
+nærheten kan finne hverandre ved hjelp av
+<a href="http://flynor.net/mesh/mesh.php">kartet over planlagte og
+eksisterende radio-repeatere</A>), bli med på epostlisten
+<a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
+(at) nuug.no</a> og stikk innom
+<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">IRC-kanalen
+#dugnadsnett.no</a>. Så langt er det planlagt over 40
+radio-repeatere, med VPN-forbindelser via Internet for å la de delene
+av nettet som ikke når hverandre via radio kunne snakke med hverandre
+likevel.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
+but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
+had a new school administrator show up on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
+his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
+time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
+Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
+Germany a few years ago.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
+engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
+the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
+freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
+
+<p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
+from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
+projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
+system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
+(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
+(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
+system supporting various operating systems).</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
+coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
+source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
+introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Quick installation,</li>
+ <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
+ <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
+ <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
+ single company,</li>
+ <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
+ experience and problem solutions.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
+ the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
+ a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
+ working again reliably.
+
+ <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
+ little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
+ similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
+ as their base.
+
+ <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
+ configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
+ not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
+ configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
+ and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
+ network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
+
+ <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
+ contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
+ distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
+ Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
+ future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
+ schemes.</li>
+
+ <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
+ compared to Debian.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
+rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
+Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
+upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
+programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
+occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
+programming languages for teaching.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Strong arguments are</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
+ teaching and learning.</li>
+
+ <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
+ home, and at their working place without running into license or
+ conversion problems.</li>
+
+ <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
+ than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
+ customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
+ science, not products.</li>
+
+ <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
+ would you need proprietary software for?</li>
+
+</ul>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
+your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
+stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
+experiment with interesting network technology, the
+<a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
+might be project for you. 39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
+in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
+wireless community network. The work is inspired by
+<a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
+<a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
+Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
+and other successful mesh networks around the globe. Two days ago we
+held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
+mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
+<a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
+(at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
+<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
+coordinate the work. See also the NUUG blog post
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
+the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Hvor godt fungerer Linux-klienter mot MS Exchange?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvor_godt_fungerer_Linux_klienter_mot_MS_Exchange_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvor_godt_fungerer_Linux_klienter_mot_MS_Exchange_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Jeg
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pent_m_te_p__onsdag_om_bruken_av_Microsoft_Exchange_ved_Universitetet_i_Oslo.html">skrev
+i juni om protestene</a> på planene til min arbeidsplass,
+<a href="http://www.uio.no/">Universitetet i Oslo</a>, om å gå bort fra
+fri programvare- og åpne standardløsninger for å håndtere epost,
+vekk fra IETF-standarden SIEVE for filtrering av epost og over til
+godseide spesifikasjoner og epostsystemet Microsoft Exchange.
+Protestene har fått litt ny omtale i media de siste dagene, i tillegg
+til de oppslagene som kom i mai.</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>2013-11-26 <a href="http://www.version2.dk/artikel/gigantisk-outlook-konvertering-moeder-protester-paa-universitet-55147">Gigantisk Outlook-konvertering møder protester på universitet</a> - versjon2.dk</li>
+
+<li>2013-11-25
+ <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article279407.ece">Microsoft-protest
+ på Universitetet</a> - Computerworld</li>
+
+<li>2013-11-25
+ <a href="http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/11/uio-bor-bruke-apen-programvare.html">Kjemper
+ mot innføring av Microsoft Exchange på UiO</a> - Uniforum</li>
+
+<li>2013-11-25
+ <a href="http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/11/uio-utsetter-innforing-av-nytt-e-postsystem.html">Utsetter
+ innføring av nytt e-postsystem</a> - Uniforum</li>
+
+<li>2013-05-29
+ <a href="http://universitas.no/nyhet/58462/forsvarer-nytt-it-system">Forsvarer
+ nytt IT-system</a> - Universitas</li>
+
+<li>2013-05-23
+ <a href="http://www.uniforum.uio.no/nyheter/2013/05/uio-innforer-nytt-epost-og-kalendersystem.html">UiO
+ innfører nytt epost- og kalenderverktøy</a> - Uniforum</li>
+
+<li>2013-05-22
+ <a href="http://universitas.no/nyhet/58424/protestgruppe-vil-stanse-it-system">Protestgruppe
+ vil stanse IT-system</a> - Universitas</li>
+
+<li>2013-05-15
+ <a href="http://www.uniforum.uio.no/leserbrev/2013/uio-ma-ha-kontroll-over-sitt-eget-epostsystem.html">UiO
+ må ha kontroll over sitt eget epostsystem</a> - Uniforum</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>Prosjektledelsen har fortalt at dette skal fungere like godt for
+Linux-brukere som for brukere av Microsoft Windows og Apple MacOSX,
+men jeg lurer på hva slags erfaringer Linux-brukere i eksisterende
+miljøer som bruker MS Exchange har gjort. Hvis du har slik erfaring
+hadet det vært veldig fint om du kan send et leserbrev til
+<a href="http://www.uniforum.uio.no/">Uniforum</a> og fortelle om hvor
+greit det er å bruke Exchange i kryss-platform-miljøer? De jeg har
+snakket med sier en greit får lest e-posten sin hvis Exchange har
+slått på IMAP-funksjonalitet, men at kalender og møtebooking ikke
+fungerer godt for Linux-klienter. Jeg har ingen personlig erfaring å
+komme med, så jeg er nysgjerrig på hva andre kan dele av erfaringer
+med universitetet.</p>
+
+<p>Mitt ankerpunkt mot å bytte ut fri programvare som fungerer godt
+med godseid programvare er at en mister kontroll over egen
+infrastruktur, låser seg inn i en løsning det vil bli dyrt å komme ut
+av, uten at en får funksjonalitet en ikke kunne skaffet seg med fri
+programvare, eventuelt videreutviklet med de pengene som brukes på
+overgangen til MS Exchange. Personlig planlegger jeg å fortsette å
+laste ned all eposten min til lokal maskin for indeksering og lesing
+med <a href=="http://notmuchmail.org">notmuch</a>, så jeg håper jeg
+ikke blir veldig skadelidende av overgangen.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://dinis.linguateca.pt/Diana/ImotMSUiO.html">Underskriftslista
+for oss som er mot endringen</a>, som omtales i artiklene, er fortsatt
+åpen for de som vil signere på oppropet. Akkurat nå er det 298
+personer som har signert.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
+development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
+acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
+the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
+compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
+Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
+support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
+is working on. I checked the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
+<a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
+<a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
+packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
+OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
+These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
+ with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
+ up.</li>
+
+ <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
+
+ <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
+ Matthias Klose.</li>
+
+ <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
+ Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
+
+ <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
+ .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
+ Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.15 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a testsuite check.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>RSS-kilde for fritekstsøk i offentlige anbud hos Doffin</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RSS_kilde_for_friteksts_k_i_offentlige_anbud_hos_Doffin.html</link>
tittel. En kan lage mer avanserte søk hvis en ønsker det. URL-en som
dukker opp nederst på siden kan en så gi til sin RSS-leser (jeg bruker
akregator selv), og så automatisk få beskjed hvis det dukker opp anbud
-med det aktuelle nøkkelordet i teksten. Merk at kapasiteten hos
-Scraperwiki er begrenset, så be RSS-leseren kun hente ned en gang hver
-dag eller noe slikt.</p>
+med det aktuelle nøkkelordet i teksten. Merk at kapasiteten og
+ytelsen hos Scraperwiki er begrenset, så ikke be RSS-leseren hente ned
+oftere enn en gang hver dag.</p>
<p>Du lurer kanskje på hva slags informasjon en kan få ut fra denne
databasen. Her er to RSS-kilder, med søkeordet
datasettet og sett opp din egen tjeneste hvis du vil gjøre mer
avanserte søk. SQLite-filen med Doffin-oppføringer kan lastes med fra
Scraperwiki for de som vil grave dypere.</p>
-<!-- nov 625, okt 1080, sep 1120 -->
</description>
</item>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most
+ <description><p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most
know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
-plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
-Oslo</a>. The workshop to help people get started will take place
-Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
-people joining forces to make this happen. We have
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
-locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
-a connected mesh spread across Oslo. If this sound interesting to
-you, please join us at the workshop. If you are too impatient to wait
-15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
-<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
-right away. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
-use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
-bought arrived on Friday. Here are my notes on how to set up the
-MR3040 as a mesh node using
-<a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
-<a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
-and downloaded
-<a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
-recommended firmware image</a>
-(openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
-uploaded it into the original web interface. The flashing went fine,
-and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port. After
-logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
-could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
-
-<p>I started off by reading the instructions from
-<a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
-Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
-eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
-<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
-batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>. A small snag was the fact that the
-<tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
-should. The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
-dependency crc16 was not already loaded. I
-<a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
-the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon. But the problem
-only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
-seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
-
-<p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/. I did not bridge
-the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
-box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
-The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
-them:</p>
-
-<p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
-
-<pre>
-
-config interface 'loopback'
- option ifname 'lo'
- option proto 'static'
- option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
- option netmask '255.0.0.0'
-
-config globals 'globals'
- option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
-
-config interface 'lan'
- option ifname 'eth0'
- option type 'bridge'
- option proto 'dhcp'
- option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
- option netmask '255.255.255.0'
- option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
- option ip6assign '60'
-
-config interface 'mesh'
- option ifname 'adhoc0'
- option mtu '1528'
- option proto 'batadv'
- option mesh 'bat0'
-</pre>
-
-<p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
-<pre>
-
-config wifi-device 'radio0'
- option type 'mac80211'
- option channel '11'
- option hwmode '11ng'
- option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
- option htmode 'HT20'
- list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
- list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
- list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
- list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
- option disabled '0'
-
-config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
- option device 'radio0'
- option ifname 'adhoc0'
- option network 'mesh'
- option encryption 'none'
- option mode 'adhoc'
- option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
- option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
-</pre>
-<p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
-<pre>
-
-config 'mesh' 'bat0'
- option interfaces 'adhoc0'
- option 'aggregated_ogms'
- option 'ap_isolation'
- option 'bonding'
- option 'fragmentation'
- option 'gw_bandwidth'
- option 'gw_mode'
- option 'gw_sel_class'
- option 'log_level'
- option 'orig_interval'
- option 'vis_mode'
- option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
- option 'distributed_arp_table'
- option 'network_coding'
- option 'hop_penalty'
-
-# yet another batX instance
-# config 'mesh' 'bat5'
-# option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
-</pre>
-
-<p>The mesh node is now operational. I have yet to test its range,
-but I hope it is good. I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
-still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
-<a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
-init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
-init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
-of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/lib/init/init-d-script
-### BEGIN INIT INFO
-# Provides: rsyslog
-# Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
-# Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
-# X-Stop-After: sendsigs
-# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
-# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
-# Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
-# Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
-# It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
-# used as a drop-in replacement.
-### END INIT INFO
-DESC="enhanced syslogd"
-DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
-script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
-info/comments.</p>
-
-<p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
-/lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-
-# Define LSB log_* functions.
-# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
-# and status_of_proc is working.
-. /lib/lsb/init-functions
-
-#
-# Function that starts the daemon/service
-
-#
-do_start()
-{
- # Return
- # 0 if daemon has been started
- # 1 if daemon was already running
- # 2 if daemon could not be started
- start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
- || return 1
- start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
- $DAEMON_ARGS \
- || return 2
- # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
- # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
- # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
-}
-
-#
-# Function that stops the daemon/service
-#
-do_stop()
-{
- # Return
- # 0 if daemon has been stopped
- # 1 if daemon was already stopped
- # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
- # other if a failure occurred
- start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
- RETVAL="$?"
- [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
- # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
- # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
- # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
- # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
- # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
- # sleep for some time.
- start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
- [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
- # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
- rm -f $PIDFILE
- return "$RETVAL"
-}
-
-#
-# Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
-#
-do_reload() {
- #
- # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
- # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
- # then implement that here.
- #
- start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
- return 0
-}
-
-SCRIPTNAME=$1
-scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
-echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
-if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
- script="$1"
- shift
- . $script
-else
- exit 0
-fi
-
-NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
-PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
-
-# Exit if the package is not installed
-#[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
-
-# Read configuration variable file if it is present
-[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
-
-# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
-. /lib/init/vars.sh
-
-case "$1" in
- start)
- [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_start
- case "$?" in
- 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
- esac
- ;;
- stop)
- [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_stop
- case "$?" in
- 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
- esac
- ;;
- status)
- status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
- ;;
- #reload|force-reload)
- #
- # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
- # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
- #
- #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
- #do_reload
- #log_end_msg $?
- #;;
- restart|force-reload)
- #
- # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
- # 'force-reload' alias
- #
- log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_stop
- case "$?" in
- 0|1)
- do_start
- case "$?" in
- 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
- *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
- esac
- ;;
- *)
- # Failed to stop
- log_end_msg 1
- ;;
- esac
- ;;
- *)
- echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
- exit 3
- ;;
-esac
-
-:
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
-lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
-work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
-optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
-
-<p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
-the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
-get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
-robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
-and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
-remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
-Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
-that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
-missing in Debian. The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
-for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
-2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
-from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
-repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
-others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
-mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
-NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
-
-<p>The source is now available from
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>The
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
-program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
-create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
-debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
-stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
-of a plan to simplify the build system for
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
-project</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
-the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
-based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
-Raspberry Pi.</p>
-
-<p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
-architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
-code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
-Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
-allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
-Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>. First, the
-<tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
-call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
-generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
-vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
-two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
-fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
-given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
-partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a <tt>--variant
-variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
-Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
-<tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
-as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
-most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
-upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
-available from
-<a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
-upstream project page</a>.</p>
-
-<p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
-create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
-binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
-list:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-set -e # Exit on first error
-rootdir="$1"
-cd "$rootdir"
-cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
-deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
-EOF
-# Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
-# install a kernel somewhere too.
-wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
- -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
-chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
-mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
-touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
-chroot $rootdir rpi-update
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
-to build the image:</p>
-
-<pre>
-sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
- --variant minbase \
- --arch armel \
- --distribution jessie \
- --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
- --image test.img \
- --size 600M \
- --bootsize 64M \
- --boottype vfat \
- --log-level debug \
- --verbose \
- --no-kernel \
- --no-extlinux \
- --root-password raspberry \
- --hostname raspberrypi \
- --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
- --customize `pwd`/customize \
- --package netbase \
- --package git-core \
- --package binutils \
- --package ca-certificates \
- --package wget \
- --package kmod
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
-rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
-exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
-/etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
-set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
-that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
-using a non-free binary blob.</p>
-
-<p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
-probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
-build dependency list.</p>
-
-<p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
-on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
-optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
-than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Det er jo makta som er mest sårbar ved massiv overvåkning av Internett</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_er_jo_makta_som_er_mest_s_rbar_ved_massiv_overv_kning_av_Internett.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_er_jo_makta_som_er_mest_s_rbar_ved_massiv_overv_kning_av_Internett.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 26 Oct 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>De siste måneders eksponering av
-<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Her-er-Edvard-Snowdens-mest-omtalte-avsloringer-7351734.html">den
-totale overvåkningen som foregår i den vestlige verden dokumenterer
-hvor sårbare vi er</a>. Men det slår meg at de som er mest sårbare
-for dette, myndighetspersoner på alle nivåer, neppe har innsett at de
-selv er de mest interessante personene å lage profiler på, for å kunne
-påvirke dem.</p>
-
-<p>For å ta et lite eksempel: Stortingets nettsted,
-<a href="http://www.stortinget.no/">www.stortinget.no</a> (og
-forsåvidt også
-<a href="http://data.stortinget.no/">data.stortinget.no</a>),
-inneholder informasjon om det som foregår på Stortinget, og jeg antar
-de største brukerne av informasjonen der er representanter og
-rådgivere på Stortinget. Intet overraskende med det. Det som derimot
-er mer skjult er at Stortingets nettsted bruker
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics">Google
-Analytics</a>, hvilket gjør at enhver som besøker nettsidene der også
-rapporterer om besøket via Internett-linjer som passerer Sverige,
-England og videre til USA. Det betyr at informasjon om ethvert besøk
-på stortingets nettsider kan snappes opp av svensk, britisk og USAs
-etterretningsvesen. De kan dermed holde et øye med hvilke
-Stortingssaker stortingsrepresentantene synes er interessante å sjekke
-ut, og hvilke sider rådgivere og andre på stortinget synes er
-interessant å besøke, når de gjør det og hvilke andre representanter
-som sjekker de samme sidene omtrent samtidig. Stortingets bruk av
-Google Analytics gjør det dermed enkelt for utenlands etteretning å
-spore representantenes aktivitet og interesse. Hvis noen av
-representantene bruker Google Mail eller noen andre tjenestene som
-krever innlogging, så vil det være enda enklere å finne ut nøyaktig
-hvilke personer som bruker hvilke nettlesere og dermed knytte
-informasjonen opp til enkeltpersoner på Stortinget.</p>
-
-<p>Og jo flere nettsteder som bruker Google Analytics, jo bedre
-oversikt over stortingsrepresentantenes lesevaner og interesse blir
-tilgjengelig for svensk, britisk og USAs etterretning. Hva de kan
-bruke den informasjonen til overlater jeg til leseren å undres
-over.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
-<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
-batman-adv mesh technology</a>. I want to gain some experience to see
-if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
-Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
-mesh network around the park where I live. Batman-adv is a layer 2
-mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
-as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
-
-<p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
-around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv. So
-instead, I started playing with a
-<a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
-get it working as a mesh node. My idea is to use it to create a mesh
-node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
-the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
-network. This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
-WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
-non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh. This in turn is useful for
-Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
-Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
-phone and message each other for free. The reason is that Android
-phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
-the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted. But if
-they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
-every client on the local network.</p>
-
-<p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
-and a script
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
-to create the Raspberry Pi boot image. I'm using Debian Jessie (and
-not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
-Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
-image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now. Also, as
-Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
-Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit. I hope
-the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
-support.</p>
-
-<p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
-after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-% wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
- https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
-% sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
-% dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
-%
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
-wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node. At least it does for
-me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
-ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
-earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
-
-<p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either. I bought
-everything over the counter in shops nearby. If I had ordered online
-from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
-
-<p><table>
-
-<tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
-<tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
-
-</table></p>
-
-<p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
-connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
-floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
-play-node I use to develop the image building script. And some times
-I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it. I look forward
-to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
-and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
-(with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
-web page. Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
-easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github. If
-you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
-libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
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