- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 3rd January 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
-for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
-interesting.</p>
-
-<P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
-post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
-the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
-integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
-scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
-remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
-wrap up its tasks.</p>
-
-<p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
-of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
-Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
-to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
-because I was typing.</P>
-
-<p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
-the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
-/proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
-installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
-generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
-one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
-generate entropy.</p>
-
-<p>The fix is in
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
-of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
-developers</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a></div>
+ <div class="date">13th May 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
+publish another interview with the people behind
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
+This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
+years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
+details get right before release.
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
+Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly 20 years as
+certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
+international company for machinery and equipment. Since 2011 I'm a
+certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
+documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
+I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
+manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
+
+<p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
+it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
+home since 2006.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
+daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
+middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
+him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
+asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
+computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
+
+<p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
+running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
+gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
+network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
+and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
+to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
+building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
+Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
+being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
+costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
+school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
+people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
+prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
+managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
+the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
+Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
+for me as today.</p>
+
+<p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
+they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
+
+<li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
+cost.</li>
+
+<li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
+schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
+clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
+infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
+server</li>
+
+<li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
+school.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
+came up in this way:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
+now.</li>
+
+<li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
+have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
+because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
+
+<li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
+management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
+interfaces used in the past.</li>
+
+<li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
+different needs.</li>
+
+<li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
+
+<li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
+world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
+is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
+
+<li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
+solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
+their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
+whole municipality areas.</li>
+
+<li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
+enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
+politicians.</li>
+
+<li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
+computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
+use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
+KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
+need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
+screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
+
+<p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
+and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
+rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
+with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
+and the whole family. I probably forgot something.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
+Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
+countries and areas all over the world.</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/intervju">intervju</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intervju_med_digi_no_om_Norge_Digitalt_og_Openstreetmap.html">Intervju med digi.no om Norge Digitalt og Openstreetmap</a></div>
+ <div class="date">11th May 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>I går ble jeg kontaktet på epost av
+<a href="http://www.digi.no">digi.no</a>s Eirik Rossen som lurte på om
+jeg hadde noen kommentarer til
+<a href="http://www.statkart.no/statkart.ny.no/nor/Statens_kartverk/Om_Statens_kartverk/Pressesenter/Nyhetsarkiv/Nyheter_2012/mai/Norge+i+tet+på+digitale+kartdata.d25-SwZLMWg.ips">kartverkets
+pressemelding</a> om Norges tetplassering når det gjelder
+kart-tilgjengelighet. Jeg svarte følgende, som resulterte i noen
+sitater i
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/895420/norge-i-tet-paa-digitale-kartdata#debatt">Digis
+dekning</a> av kartverkets pressemelding.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Takk for muligheten til å kommentere.</p>
+
+<p>Pressemeldingen omhandler tilgjengeligheten av kart for aktører som er
+medlem i kartellet Norge Digitalt. Det er ingen overraskelse for meg
+at tilgjengeligheten til kart hos disse medlemmene er god. Men for
+oss på utsiden av kartellet er tilgjengelighet av det som burde være
+felleskapets og innbyggernes kart dårlig.</p>
+
+<p>Bruksvilkårene til kartene fra medlemmene i Norge Digital hindrer
+nyskapning og selv om en er villig til å betale den ublu prisen som
+forlanges får en fortsatt ikke tilgang til kartdata uten
+bruksbegresninger. Derfor bruker jeg heller tid på å gjøre
+fribrukskartet OpenStreetmap bedre. Der fremmer bruksvilkårene
+nyskapning og lar meg skape nye tjenester uten å måtte søke om
+tillatelse fra det offentlige.</p>
+
+<p>En annen problemstilling er jo sikkerhet til fjells og til sjøs.
+Mon tro hvor mange ulykker på sjøen som kunne vært unngått hvis
+sjøkartdata var tilgjengelig uten bruksbegrensninger, slik at enhver
+med GPS eller kartplotter tilnærmet kostnadsfritt kunne sikre seg mest
+mulig oppdaterte sjøkart? Det hjelper jo ikke at offentlige etater
+har enkel tilgang til sjøkartene når det samme ikke gjelder hver
+båtkaptein og småbåtfører. Jeg tror samfunnet som helhet hadde tjent
+på å unngå kostnadene ved disse ulykkene ved å tvinge sjøkartverket
+til å publisere sine kartdata på Internet uten bruksbegresninger.</p>
+</blockquote></p>
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