- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 5th July 2013</div>
- <div class="body"><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
-for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
-time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
-will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
-ended up picking a
-<a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
-with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
-a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
-second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
-on that below.</p>
-
-<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
-important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
-listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
-feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
-allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
-requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
-to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
-disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
-get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
-
-<p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
-X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
-significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
-hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
-good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
-I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
-needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
-
-<p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
-visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
-
-<p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
-lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
-with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
-I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
-reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
-default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
-reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
-report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
-Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
-kernel developers as
-<a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
-report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
-(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
-Lenovo forums, both for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
-2012-11-10</a> and for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
-03-20-2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
-reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
-on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
-problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
-There is even a
-<a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
-available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
-minutes by writing to a file.</p>
-
-<p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
-contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
-requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
-firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
-Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
-hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
-fixed. :)</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/english">english</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 3rd July 2013</div>
- <div class="body"><p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
-today. This is the release announcement:</p>
-
-<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
-2013-07-03</strong></p>
-
-<p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
-
-<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
-
-<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
-Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
-out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
-network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
-services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
-and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
-environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
-the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
-installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
-database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
-directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
-desktop contains
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
-than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
-the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
-and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
-
-<p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
-this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
-Squeeze release.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
- <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
- submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
- brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
- <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
- they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
- menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
- <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
- multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
- X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
- too.</li>
- <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
- are too few to make the package useful.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
- <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
- <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
- up for some language options.</li>
- <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
- <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
- <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
- d-i is doing it.</li>
- <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
- debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
- <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
- script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
- Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
- <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
- installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
- <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
- <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
- and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
- <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
- work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
- available yet (698840).</li>
- <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>