- <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
-an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
-contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
-pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
-network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
-educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
-2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
-cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
-<a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
-donate some money</a>.
-
-<p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
-lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
-Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
-hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
-the Debian Edu installer.</p>
-
-<p>The script,
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
-in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
-transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
-into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
-<li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
-<li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
- our configuration.</li>
-<li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
- /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
- according to the profile specified in the config above,
- overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
-<li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
- that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
-<li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
+ <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>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
+wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
+these. :)</p>
+
+<p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
+Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
+Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
+more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
+to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
+earmarked</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
+hope you will to. :)</p>
+
+<p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
+create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
+documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
+take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
+donated. Are you next?</p>
+
+<p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
+Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
+statement under the heading
+<a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
+Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
+Norwegian government. So far 499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
+too.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
+networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
+areas, depending on the radio technology used. Normal wifi equipment
+can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
+successful examples like
+<a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
+<a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
+(see
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
+for a large list</a>) around the globe. To give you an idea how it
+work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
+can be seen from their
+<a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
+updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
+automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
+There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
+and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
+
+<p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
+to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
+href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
+my recent involvement in
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
+finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
+Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
+when possible, given that most communication between people are
+between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
+communication patterns). It also allow people to communicate without
+any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
+private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
+important over the years.</p>
+
+<p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
+working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
+<a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania. They seem to
+have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
+<a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
+Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
+behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
+<a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>. Unfortunately the wiki
+site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
+reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
+the new project. A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
+from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks. I
+came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
+speakers about this talk (from
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
+
+<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
+
+<p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
+There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
+figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
+given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
+is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
+completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
+batman-adv for now. It sure help me to know that the very cool
+<a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
+is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
+organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
+less industrialized communities. Check out this cool video presenting
+that project (from
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
+
+<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
+
+<p>According to the wikipedia page on
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
+mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
+packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
+B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
+based community mesh networks.</p>
+
+<p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
+(as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
+network. One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
+vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
+computer. The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
+least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up. A
+<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
+introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project. These are
+the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>