-<p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
-of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
-read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
-the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
-CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
-meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
-OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
-not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
-it. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 7 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>A few days ago, I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
-to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
-while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
-noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
-university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
-that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
-connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
-itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
-around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
-
-<p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
-workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
-university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
-servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
-configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
-a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
-In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
-this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
-proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
-/etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
-configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
-a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
-network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
-gave it a IP address.</p>
-
-<p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
-entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
-_ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
-server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
-namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
-pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
-algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
-uppercase version of $domain.</p>
-
-<p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
-directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
-Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
-the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
-had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
-but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
-
-<p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
-roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
-connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
-authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
-Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
-with UID and GID values.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
-Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
-similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
-University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
-hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
-infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
-Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
-servers.</p>
-
-<p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
-changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
-/etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
-(/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
-Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
-for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
-coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
-.uio.no.</p>
-
-<p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
-Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
-workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
-so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
-only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
-university servers.</p>
-
-<p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
-fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
-allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
-setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
-the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
-uses.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>I discovered this while doing
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
-testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>. A few packages
-in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
-that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
-some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
-
-<p>An example is from todays
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
-of KDE using aptitude</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
-causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
-package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
-dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
-ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
-because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
-
-<p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
- perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
- Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
-dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
- dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
-hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
-and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
-failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
-packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
-the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
-of dependency loops.</p>
-
-<p>Thanks to
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
-tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
-dependencies
-<a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
-is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
-
-<p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
-apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
-dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
-it.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
-with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
-completed.</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
-release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
-install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
-of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
-user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
-longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
-Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
-language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
-
-<p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
-artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
-and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
-
-<p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
-work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
-much.</p>
-
-<p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
-<ul>
- <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
- combination with some new artwork
- <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
- <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
- <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
- <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
- <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
- <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
- <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
- <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
- <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
-</ul></li>
-<li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
- Enabled for:
-<ul>
- <li>PAM
- <li>LDAP
- <li>IMAP
- <li>SMTP (sender verification)
-</ul>
-</li>
-<li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
-<li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
- fetched from LDAP.</li>
-<li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
-<li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
-</ul>
-<p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
- scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
- for testing.</li>
-<li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
- and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
- clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
-<li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
-<li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
-<li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
-<li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
- netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
-<li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
- some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
- jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
-<li>Some packages lack translations. See
- http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
- and help out with translations.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
-<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
-<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
-</ul>
-<p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
-<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
-<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
-get closer to the final release.</p>