<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>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
+directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
+tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
+Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
+<a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
+be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
+populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
+find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
+objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
+are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
+
+<p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
+the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
+not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
+Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
+released.</p>
+
+<p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
+like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
+not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
+<a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
+
+<p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
+in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
+useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
+in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
+changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>A while back, I
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
+about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
+for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
+of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
+the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
+the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
+computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
+
+<p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
+without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
+do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
+Debian Edu.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
+the
+<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
+schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
+available today from IETF.</p>
+
+<pre>
+--- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
++++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
+@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
+ objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
+ NAME 'dhcpHost'
+ DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
+- SUP top
++ SUP top AUXILIARY
+ MUST cn
+ MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
+ X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
+</pre>
+
+<p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
+Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
+package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</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>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
+installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
+I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
+of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
+conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
+this:
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+tasksel --new-install
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
+tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
+any output what so ever.
+
+Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
+package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
+any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
+happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
+when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
+printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
+code like this:
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
+$cmd
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
+--without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
+~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
+~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
+laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
+important, just like tasksel would have done it during
+installation.</p>
+
+<p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
+install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
+like this.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Vinmonopolet bryter loven åpenlyst - og flere planlegger å gjøre det samme</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven___penlyst___og_flere_planlegger____gj__re_det_samme.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vinmonopolet_bryter_loven___penlyst___og_flere_planlegger____gj__re_det_samme.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p><a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/06/16/nyheter/innenriks/streik/arbeidsliv/12157858/">Dagbladet
+melder</a> at Vinmonopolet med bakgrunn i vekterstreiken som pågår i
+Norge for tiden, har bestemt seg for med vitende og vilje å bryte
+sentralbanklovens paragraf 14 ved å nekte folk å betale med
+kontanter, og at flere butikker planlegger å følge deres eksempel.
+Jeg synes det er hårreisende hvis de slipper unna med et slikt
+soleklart lovbrudd, og lurer på hva slags muligheter jeg vil ha hvis
+jeg blir nektet å handle med kontanter. Jeg handler i hovedsak med
+kontanter selv, da jeg anser det som en borgerrett å kunne handle
+anonymt uten at det blir registrert. For meg er det et angrep på mitt
+personvern å nekte å ta imot kontant betaling.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19850524-028-003.html#14">Paragrafen
+i sentralbankloven</a> lyder:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>§ 14. Tvungent betalingsmiddel</p>
+
+<p>Bankens sedler og mynter er tvungent betalingsmiddel i Norge. Ingen
+er pliktig til i én betaling å ta imot mer enn femogtyve mynter av
+hver enhet.</p>
+
+<p>Sterkt skadde sedler og mynter er ikke tvungent
+betalingsmiddel. Banken gir nærmere forskrifter om erstatning for
+bortkomne, brente eller skadde sedler og mynter.</p>
+
+<p>Selv om en avtale inneholder klausul om betaling av en
+pengeforpliktelse i gullverdi, kan skyldneren frigjøre seg med tvungne
+betalingsmidler uten hensyn til denne klausul.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Det er med bakgrunn i denne lovet ikke tillatt å nekte å ta imot
+kontakt betaling. Det er en lov jeg har sans for, og som jeg mener må
+håndheves strengt.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
+interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
+is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
+<a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
+pages.</p>
+
+<p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
+that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
+and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
+interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
+request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
+a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
+arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
+administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
+contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
+see how the project is doing.</p>
+
+<p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
+machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
+OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
+in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
+Windows. This is great.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
-I focus on their removal plans.</p>
+I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
<p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
<p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
-of removals. The complete logs is available from the URL above. Note
-if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test for
-kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking conffile
-questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using '<tt>echo >>
-/proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to continue.</p>
+of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
+above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
+for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
+conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
+'<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
+continue.</p>
<p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
<br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>Via the
-<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
-of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
-<a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
-Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
-following the standards wars of today.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
-to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
-information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
-included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
-the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
- vendor count
- Dell Computer Corporation 1
- PowerEdge 1750 1
- IBM 1
- eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
- Intel 2
- [no-dmi-info] 3
-maintainer:~#
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
-provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
-information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
-machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
-option to list the individual machines.</p>
-
-<p>A larger list is
-<a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
-city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
-provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
-are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
-their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
-it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
-collector.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <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>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>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>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>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>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>
-
</channel>
</rss>
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