+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-06-11 22:50</div>
+ <div class="body">
+<p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
+see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
+have been discovered and reported in the process
+(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
+enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
+kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
+am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
+
+<p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
+Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
+it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
+script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
+desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
+(only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
+
+<p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
+currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
+in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
+is created. The bug report
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
+this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
+to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
+hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
+do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
+<a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
+issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
+maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
+working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
+udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
+upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
+documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
+Debian Squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
+script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
+trick:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+set -ex
+
+if [ "$1" ] ; then
+ desktop=$1
+else
+ desktop=gnome
+fi
+
+from=lenny
+to=squeeze
+
+exec < /dev/null
+unset LANG
+mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
+tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
+fuser -mv .
+debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
+cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d <<EOF
+#!/bin/sh
+exit 101
+EOF
+chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
+exit_cleanup() {
+ umount $tmpdir/proc
+}
+mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
+# Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
+trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
+
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
+
+# Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
+# to return the correct answers.
+echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
+ chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
+
+# Include the desktop and laptop task
+for test in desktop laptop ; do
+ echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test <<EOF
+#!/bin/sh
+exit 2
+EOF
+ chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
+done
+
+DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
+chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
+
+echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
+touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
+chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
+fuser -mv
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
+with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
+differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
+regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
+work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
+kdebase-workspace-data</p>
+
+<p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
+(KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
+post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
+aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
+remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
+KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
+193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
+
+<p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
+is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
+booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
+packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
+upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
+packages.</p>
+</div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <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>.
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_er_laget_for_sentraldrifting__naturligvis.html">Skolelinux er laget for sentraldrifting, naturligvis</a></div>
+ <div class="date">2010-06-09 12:30</div>
+ <div class="body">
+<p>Det er merkelig hvordan myter om Skolelinux overlever. En slik
+myte er at Skolelinux ikke kan sentraldriftes og ha sentralt plasserte
+tjenermaskiner. I siste Computerworld Norge er
+<a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article169432.ece">IT-sjef
+Viggo Billdal i Steinkjer intervjuet</a>, og forteller uten
+blygsel:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Vi hadde Skolelinux, men det har vi sluttet med. Vi testet
+om det lønte seg med Microsoft eller en åpen plattform. Vi fant ut at
+Microsoft egentlig var totalt sett bedre egnet. Det var store
+driftskostnader med Skolelinux, blant annet på grunn av
+desentraliserte servere. Det var komplisert, så vi gikk vekk fra det
+og bruker nå bare Windows.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>En <a
+href="https://init.linpro.no/pipermail/skolelinux.no/bruker/2010-June/009101.html">rask
+sjekk</a> mot den norske brukerlista i Skolelinuxprosjektet forteller
+at Steinkjers forsøk foregikk fram til 2004/2005, og at Røysing skole
+i Steinkjer skal ha vært svært fornøyd med Skolelinux men at kommunen
+overkjørte skolen og krevde at de gikk over til Windows. Et søk på
+nettet sendte meg til
+<a href="http://www.dn.no/multimedia/archive/00090/Dagens_it_nr__18_90826a.pdf">Dagens
+IT nr. 18 2005</a> hvor en kan lese på side 18:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Inge Tømmerås ved Røysing skole i Steinkjer kjører ennå
+Microsoft, men forteller at kompetanseutfordringen med Skolelinux ikke
+var så stor. Jeg syntes Skolelinux var utrolig lett å drifte uten
+forkunnskaper. Men man må jo selvsagt ha tilgang på ekstern kompetanse
+til installasjoner og maskinvarefeil, sier Tømmerås.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Som systemarkitekten bak Skolelinux, kan jeg bare riste på hodet
+over påstanden om at Skolelinux krever desentraliserte tjenere.
+Skolelinux-arkitekturen er laget for sentralisert drift og plassering
+av tjenerne lokalt eller sentralt alt etter behov og nettkapasitet.
+Den er modellert på nettverks- og tjenerløsningen som brukes på
+Universitetet i Tromsø og Oslo, der jeg jobber med utvikling av
+driftstjenester. Dette er det heldigvis noen som har fått med seg, og
+jeg er glad for å kunne sitere fra en kommentar på den overnevnte
+artikkelen. Min venn og gamle kollega Sturle Sunde forteller der:
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>I Flora kommune køyrer vi Skulelinux på skular med alt frå 15 til
+meir enn 500 elevar. Dei store skulane har eigen tenar, for det er
+mest praktisk. Eg, som er driftsansvarleg for heile nettet, ser
+sjeldan dei tenarane fysisk, men at dei står der gjer skulane mindre
+avhengige av eksterne linjer som er trege eller dyre. Dei minste
+skulane har ikkje eigen tenar. Å bruke sentral tenar er heller ikkje
+noko problem. Småskulane klarar seg fint med 1 mbit-linje til ein
+sentral tenar eller tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
+
+<p>Det beste med Skulelinux er halvtjukke klientar. Dei treng ikkje
+harddisk og brukar minimalt med ressursar på tenaren fordi dei køyrer
+programma lokalt. Eit klasserom med 30 sju-åtte år gamle maskiner har
+mykje meir CPU og RAM totalt enn nokon moderne tenar til under
+millionen. Det trengst to kommandoar på den sentrale tenaren for å
+oppdatere alle klientane, både tynne og halvtjukke. Vi har ingen
+problem med diskar som ryk heller, som var eit problem før fordi
+elevane sat og sparka i maskinene. Og dei krev lite bandbreidde i
+nettet, so det er fullt mogleg å køyre slike på småskular med trege
+linjer mot tenaren på ein større skule.</p>
+
+<p>Flora kommune har nesten 800 Linux-maskiner i sitt skulenett, og
+ein person som tek seg av drift av heile nettet, inkludert tenarar,
+klientar, operativsystem, programvare, heimekontorløysing og
+administrasjon av brukarar.</p>
+
+<p>No skal det seiast at vi ikkje køyrer rein Skulelinux ut av
+boksen. Vi har gjort ein del tilpassingar mot noko Novell-greier som
+var der frå før, og som har komplisert installasjonen vår. Etter at
+oppsettet var gjort har løysinga vore stabil og kravd minimalt med
+arbeid.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Jeg vet at Narvik, Harstad og Oslo er kommuner der Skolelinux
+sentraldriftes med sentrale tjenere. Det forteller meg at Steinkjers
+IT-sjef neppe bør skylde på Skolelinux-løsningen for sine 5 år gamle
+minner.</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/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/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="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>
+
+<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>
+</div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <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/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a></div>
<div class="date">2010-06-06 14:15</div>
- 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/
bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <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>.
</div>
</div>
- 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/
bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <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>.
</div>
</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="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,
-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>.
-
- </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="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>
-</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>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-14 21:10</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
-system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
-network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
-central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
-also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
-MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
-to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
-
-<p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
-ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
-this on the collector host:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
-line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
-
-<p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
-addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
-machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
-tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
-written yet.</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>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
<p style="text-align: right;"><a href="index.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS feed" width="36" height="14"></a></p>
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+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (7)</a></li>
</ul></li>
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+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (5)</a></li>
+
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (25)</a></li>
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+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (36)</a></li>
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- <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 (67)</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 (75)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (12)</a></li>
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