<channel>
<title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
<description></description>
- <link></link>
- <atom:link href="index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <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>Avisene i endring</title>
- <link>Avisene_i_endring.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Avisene_i_endring.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Togsatsing på norsk, mot sykkel</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Togsatsing_p___norsk__mot_sykkel.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jun 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Jeg kom over bloggposten
-"<a href="http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/">Newspapers
-and Thinking the Unthinkable</a>" som jeg synes forklarer godt hva som
-skjer med aviser, og fikk meg til å tenke litt rundt andre utdøende
-forretningsmodeller basert på å løse problemer som ikke lenger
-eksisterer. Det blir spennende å se hva vi ender opp med.</p>
+<p>Det står dårlig til med toget når en finner på å la det
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3677060.ece">kappkjøre
+med sykkel</a>... Jeg tror det trengs strukturendringer for å få
+fikset på togproblemene i Norge.</p>
+
+<p>Mon tro hva toglinje mellom Narvik og Tromsø ville hatt slags
+effekt på området der?</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>En skam at det ikke finnes ordrett referat fra norske domstoler</title>
- <link>En_skam_at_det_ikke_finnes_ordrett_referat_fra_norske_domstoler.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">En_skam_at_det_ikke_finnes_ordrett_referat_fra_norske_domstoler.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Advokatene jobber i disse dager hardt for å bli kvitt juryordningen
-fra norske domstoler. Det har de forsåvidt jobbet med i mange år.
-Personlig tror jeg det er å starte i feil ende, og en dårlig ide.</p>
-
-<p>Visst du at det ikke lages ordrett referat fra norske domstoler?
-Det er ingen som skriver ned alt som sies i en norsk rettsal slik en
-ser i TV-serier fra USA. Det som publiseres er dommerens
-oppsummering, og alt som ikke blir med i den oppsummeringen er det
-vanskelig å få dokumentert i ettertid. Konsekvensen er at en kan
-lyve så mye en vil fra vitneboksen uten å bli tatt for det i
-ettertid, hvis dommeren ikke syntes det som ble sagt var så
-interessant at det ble med i dokumentet som dokumenterer
-domsavsigelsen. Mens alt som sies fra Stortingets talerstol er
-tilgjengelig på web etter kort tid for kontroll og kritikk, er det
-ingen tilsvarende mulighet for det som sies fra vitneboksen i en norsk
-domstol. Kan dette føre til at en sak varer lengre enn nødvendig i
-rettssystemet? Jeg tror det, og synes det er en skam at det ikke
-publiseres ordrette referater fra norske rettsaler.</p>
-
-<p>En relatert observasjon er at det i utvalgte deler av landet
-eksperimenteres med lydopptak fra rettsalen, men disse opptakene er
-kun tilgjengelig for dommeren til hjelp når oppsummeringen skrives.
-Jeg synes som et minimum at disse lydopptakene som en regel burde vært
-publisert offentlig på web.</p>
+<p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
+start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
+problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
+initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
+against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
+that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
+kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
+
+<p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
+problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
+distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
+maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
+the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
+while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
+distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
+but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Testing av reprap-elektronikken igang</title>
- <link>Testing_av_reprap_elektronikken_igang.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Testing_av_reprap_elektronikken_igang.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Lenge siden det var en oppdatering av status for min 3D-skriver og
-i mellomtiden har det skjedd en god del. Reprap-en er nesten ferdig
-montert, og elektronikken er også nesten ferdig loddet. Det ser ut
-til at bits-from-bytes sitt byggesett versjon 2.01 hadde noen småfeil,
-der en del manglet og en annen hadde suboptimalt design. Jeg løser
-antagelig det ene problemet med å borre noen ekstra hull til skruver i
-en plastdelen som trenger å festes. Det andre problemet håper jeg å
-få hjelp fra Audun Vaaler ved Høgskolen i Østfold til å løse.
-Høgskolen er igang med å bygge en tilsvarende reprap i versjon 2.0, og
-er kommet litt lenger enn meg. De kan forhåpentligvis skrive ut den
-delen jeg mangler på denne.</p>
-
-<p>Når det gjelder elektronikken, så er mye allerede loddet sammen av
-min venn Anders Rosnes, som har mer peiling på elektronikk og lodding
-enn meg. Jeg fikk i dag testet
-<a href="http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/Stepper_Motor_Driver_1_1">stepper
-motordriveren (v1.1)</a>, og det fungerte. Jeg møtte et lite problem
-med strømforsyningen, en standard ATX-strømforsyning som nektet å
-fungere før jeg hadde satt en ledning mellom GRD og PS_ON som
-beskrevet på
-<a href="http://dev.www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/PCPowerSupply">reprap-sidene
-om PC-strømforsyninger</a>. Jeg møtte også et annet problem med
-Arduino-programvaren. Versjon 0013 fungerer visst ikke på
-Debian/Etch. Den kompilerte binæren ble på 0 bytes. En side jeg fant
-vha. et Google-søk
-<a href="http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1234153046/5">tipset
-meg</A> om at en nedgradering
-til <a href="http://arduino.googlecode.com/files/arduino-0012-linux.tgz">versjon
-0012</a> kunne løse problemet, og endelig ser jeg motorakslingen
-snurre. Nå er det å koble sammen mekanikk og elektronikk for å se om
-reprap-en kvikner til.</p>
+<p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
+The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
+issues are known and should be solved:
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>The wicd package seen to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
+parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
+seem to be on the case.</li>
+
+<li>The nvidia X driver seem to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
+triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
+maintainer is on the case.</li>
+
+<li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
+sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
+sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
+/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
+sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
+workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
+sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
+solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
+some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
+which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
+
+<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>
+
+<p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Frikanalen og jul i studentrådet</title>
- <link>Frikanalen_og_jul_i_studentr__det.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Frikanalen_og_jul_i_studentr__det.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>I går
-<a href="http://lists.nuug.no/pipermail/interesserte/2009-March/000387.html">lanserte</a>
-NUUGs videogruppe
-<a href="http://www.frikanalen.no">Frikanalen</a> med
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/frontpage.cgi">åpne
-standarder</a>, og resultatet av noen intense uker med arbeide kunne
-endelig presenteres. Jeg har tro på åpen kanalkonseptet som
-Frikanalen er et eksempel på, der borgerne får anledning til å
-kringkaste sitt syn på en åpen og demokratisk måte. Jeg er veldig
-glad vi har fått gjort kanalen tilgjengelig i Ogg Theora, slik at alle
-kan få tilgang til opptakene på web, og slipper å måtte installere MS
-Silverlight for å spille av opptakene.</p>
-
-<p>Frikanalen har en brokete historie, og dagens inkarnasjon er ikke
-helt slik foreningen Åpen kanal planla det for mange år siden, noe som
-er bakgrunnen for at det fredag 13. mars 2009 kl 09:00 starter en
-rettsak i Oslo tingrett der Kringkasterforeningen (tidligere
-foreningen Åpen kanal) har saksøkt kulturdepartementet over
-konsesjonsvilkårene til Frikanalen. Jeg er spent på resultatet.</p>
-
-<p>I arbeidet med Frikanalen med åpne standarder, så har vi hatt glede
-av å se en rekke av innslagene som er tilgjengelig. Her er mye
-religiøst sludder, fra
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=720">vandring
-i jerusalem</a> via
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=779">religiøst
-vinklede nyheter</a> til
-<a
-href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=2077">kreasjonisk
-retorikk</a>, men også fine
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=407">dokumentarer
-om redningsselskapet</a> og
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=2204">interessante
-tegneserieanmeldelser</a>. Det jeg derimot har hatt størst glede av,
-er
-
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/frikanalen/fetchvideo.cgi?videoId=1556">jul
-i studentrådet</a>, der hver episode var en fest å se på. Jeg håper
-NUUG lykkes med å få ut sine opptak med like stor suksess.</p>
+<p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
+found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
+working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
+definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
+
+<p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
+include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
+get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
+firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
+install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
+are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
+an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
+enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
+debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
+Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
+to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
+/cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
+found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
+going to work.</p>
+
+<p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
+look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
+the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
+packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
+"external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
+/cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
+solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
+look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
+provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
+to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
+Edu.</p>
+
+<p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
+activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
+hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
+run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
+license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
+solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
+contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Lisensvalg for NUUG-opptakene endelig på plass</title>
- <link>Lisensvalg_for_NUUG_opptakene_endelig_p___plass.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Lisensvalg_for_NUUG_opptakene_endelig_p___plass.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Magnetstripeinnhold i billetter fra Flytoget og Hurtigruten</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 21 May 2010 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Etter mange års meditasjon over temaet, har NUUG endelig klart å
-bestemme seg for hvilken lisens vi skal bruke på videoopptakene som
-gjøres av NUUGs videogruppe. Ole Kristian har annonsert at lisensen
-blir <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
-Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>. Jeg er veldig
-glad for at denne saken endelig er landet. Lisensen for opptaket til
-Stallman-foredraget ble en annen pga. at lisensvalget ikke var avklart
-på forhånd og IFI og PING ønsket CC-BY-ND, og må ses på som et unntak
-i denne sammenhengen.</p>
+<p>For en stund tilbake kjøpte jeg en magnetkortleser for å kunne
+titte på hva som er skrevet inn på magnetstripene til ulike kort. Har
+ikke hatt tid til å analysere mange kort så langt, men tenkte jeg
+skulle dele innholdet på to kort med mine lesere.</p>
+
+<p>For noen dager siden tok jeg flyet til Harstad og Hurtigruten til
+Bergen. Flytoget fra Oslo S til flyplassen ga meg en billett med
+magnetstripe. Påtrykket finner jeg følgende informasjon:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Flytoget Airport Express Train
+
+Fra - Til : Oslo Sentralstasjon
+Kategori : Voksen
+Pris : Nok 170,00
+Herav mva. 8,00% : NOK 12,59
+Betaling : Kontant
+Til - Fra : Oslo Lufthavn
+Utstedt: : 08.05.10
+Gyldig Fra-Til : 08.05.10-07.11.10
+Billetttype : Enkeltbillett
+
+102-1015-100508-48382-01-08
+</pre>
+
+<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
+<tt>;E?+900120011=23250996541068112619257138248441708433322932704083389389062603279671261502492655?</tt>.
+Aner ikke hva innholdet representerer, og det er lite overlapp mellom
+det jeg ser trykket på billetten og det jeg ser av tegn i
+magnetstripen. Håper det betyr at de bruker kryptografiske metoder
+for å gjøre det vanskelig å forfalske billetter.</p>
+
+<p>Den andre billetten er fra Hurtigruten, der jeg mistenker at
+strekkoden på fronten er mer brukt enn magnetstripen (det var i hvert
+fall den biten vi stakk inn i dørlåsen).</p>
+
+<p>Påtrykket forsiden er følgende:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Romnummer 727
+Hurtigruten
+Midnatsol
+Reinholdtsen
+Petter
+Bookingno: SAX69 0742193
+Harstad-Bergen
+Dep: 09.05.2010 Arr: 12.05.2010
+Lugar fra Risøyhamn
+Kost: FRO=4
+</pre>
+
+<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
+<tt>;1316010007421930=00000000000000000000?+E?</tt>. Heller ikke her
+ser jeg mye korrespondanse mellom påtrykk og magnetstripe.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Teknisk program for Go Open 2009 er nesten ferdig</title>
- <link>Teknisk_program_for_Go_Open_2009_er_nesten_ferdig.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Teknisk_program_for_Go_Open_2009_er_nesten_ferdig.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Etter lang tids jobbing begynner endelig programmet til det
-tekniske sporet på konferansen <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
-2009</a> å bli ferdig. Det blir 9 punkter på programmet, og etter alt
-å dømme blir det disse 9:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>"Open Telephony: A solution greater than the sum of its parts" med
- Jon "maddog" Hall</li>
-<li>OpenSolaris-relatert med Ian Murdock fra SUN</li>
-<li>"The inner workings of the OpenStreetmap project and the
- technology used" med Andy Allan </li>
-<li>Coreboot-relatert med Peter Stuge</li>
-<li>"Gratis værdata fra Meteorologisk institutt" med Trond Michelsen</li>
-<li>RRDtool/Nagios-relatert med Tobias Oetiker</li>
-<li>"Developers guide to server-side productivity and fun using open
- source platforms and frameworks" med en gjeng folk fra
- JavaBin-miljøet</li>
-<li>"G(et)it Nå!" med Marcus Ramberg</li>
-<li>Om kontrolltelling av valgresultater med fri programvare med Mitch
- Trachtenberg</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>De siste bekreftelsene og overskrifter mangler og kommer
-forhåpentlig på plass før mandag, men jeg håper dette blir et program
-flere enn meg vil sette pris på. Jeg gleder meg i hvert fall
-stort.</p>
+<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>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</title>
- <link>Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
-of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
-contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
-register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
-machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
-each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
-status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
-include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
-machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
-machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
-information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
-scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
-are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
-for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
-easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
-owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
-The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
-registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
-them. 27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
-using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
-last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
-services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
-at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
-them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
-parts from other machines or move the service to another old
-machine.</p>
-
-<p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
-written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
-Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
-nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
-scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
-parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
-introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:</p>
-
-<pre>
-use LWP::Simple;
-use POSIX;
-use WWW::Mechanize;
-use Date::Parse;
-[...]
-sub get_support_info {
- my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
- my $str;
-
- if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
- # fetch website from Dell support
- my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
- my $webpage = get($url);
- return undef unless ($webpage);
-
- my $daysleft = -1;
- my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
- foreach my $line (@lines) {
- next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
- $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
- $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
-
- my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
- @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
- my $lastend = "";
- while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
- my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
-
- my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
- localtime(str2time($startstr)));
- my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
- localtime(str2time($endstr)));
- $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
- @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
- $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
- }
- my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
- tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
- if ($lastend lt $today);
- }
- } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
- my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
- my $url =
- 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
- $mech->get($url);
- my $fields = {
- 'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
- 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
- 'country' => 'NO',
- 'productNumber' => $productnumber,
- 'serialNumber1' => $serial,
- };
- $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
- fields => $fields );
- # Next step is screen scraping
- my $content = $mech->content();
-
- $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
- $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
- $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
- $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
-
- my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
-
- while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
- my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
- m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
- $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
- my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
- localtime(str2time($startstr)));
- my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
- localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
-
- $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
-
- tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
- if ($end lt $today);
- }
- } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
- # This code ignore extended support contracts.
- my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
- if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
- my $content =
- get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
- if ($content) {
- $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
- $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
- $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
- $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
-
- $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
- my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
-
- $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
-
- my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
- tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
- if ($end lt $today);
- }
- }
- }
- return $str;
-}
-</pre>
-
-<p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
-serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
-from dmidecode.</p>
-
-<pre>
-print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
- "447707-B21");
-print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
-print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
- "1234567");
-</pre>
-
-<p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
-everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
-
-<p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
-contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
-not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
-do so.</p>
+<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>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Using bar codes at a computing center</title>
- <link>Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
-in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
-location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
-removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
-computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
-the "missing" computer.</p>
-
-<p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
-<a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
-code blocks as defined in the
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
-Standard</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
-digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
-codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
-allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
-with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
-writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
-but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
-codes.</p>
-
-<p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
-machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
-tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
-computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
-If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
-locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
-
-<p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
-random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
-took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
-these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
-fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
-side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
-between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
-rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
-about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
-to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
-
-<p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
-at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
-easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
+<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>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Kart over overvåkningskamera i Norge</title>
- <link>Kart_over_overv__kningskamera_i_Norge.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Kart_over_overv__kningskamera_i_Norge.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>I regi av
-<a href="http://www.personvern.no/">personvernforeningen</a> har jeg
-startet på
-<a href="http://personvern.no/wiki/index.php/Kameraovervåkning">et
-kart over overvåkningskamera i Norge</a>. Bakgrunnen er at det etter
-min mening bærer galt avsted med den massive overvåkningen som
-finner sted i Norge i dag, og at flere og flere overvåkningskamera
-gjør det vanskeligere og vanskeligere å gå igjennom livet uten at
-små og store brødre trenger inn i ens private sfære. Datatilsynet
-har et register over kameraovervåkning, men det viser seg å være
-ubrukelig både til å finne ut hvor det er kamera plassert, og til å
-sjekke om et kamera en kommer over er registrert. Dette nye kartet
-fikser en av disse manglene, men det vil fortsatt være umulig å vite
-om et kamera er registrert etter lovens krav eller ikke. Pr. nå er
-22 kamera i Oslo registrert, og det trengs flere til å registrere
-alle. Informasjonen registreres direkte inn i <a
-href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a>, sa hentes det
-automatisk over i spesialkartet.</p>
+<p>The last few days a new boot system called
+<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
+has been
+<a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
+
+to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
+with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
+<a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
+a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
+based boot system. Tollef is
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
+systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
+like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
+information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
+at the moment do not.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
+platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
+some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
+kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
+system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
+way forward.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, based on the
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
+on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
+decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
+soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
+there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
+new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
+already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
+with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
- <link>Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
<description>
-<p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
-<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
-Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
-programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
-stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
-oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
-slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
-gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
-bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
-<tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
+<p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
+complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
+init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
+to test your Squeeze system, make sure
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
+based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
+/etc/default/rcS:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+CONCURRENCY=makefile
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
+scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
+/etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
+/etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
+to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
+start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
+make this happen.</p>
+
+<p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
+fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
+init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
+dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
+the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
+
+<p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
+manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
+expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
+fix the remaining issues.</p>
+
+<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>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff