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<item>
- <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
-Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
-party in Oslo. It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
-member assosiation NUUG</a> and
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
-Bitraf</a>.</p>
-
-<p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
-welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
-hand limited space, and only room for 30 people. Please put your name
-on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
-wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
-for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
-time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
-will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
-ended up picking a
-<a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
-with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
-a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
-second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
-on that below.</p>
-
-<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
-important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
-listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
-feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
-allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
-requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
-to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
-disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
-get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
-
-<p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
-X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
-significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
-hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
-good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
-I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
-needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
-
-<p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
-visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
-
-<p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
-lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
-with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
-I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
-reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
-default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
-reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
-report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
-Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
-kernel developers as
-<a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
-report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
-(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
-Lenovo forums, both for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
-2012-11-10</a> and for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
-03-20-2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
-reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
-on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
-problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
-There is even a
-<a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
-available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
-minutes by writing to a file.</p>
-
-<p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
-contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
-requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
-firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
-Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
-hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
-fixed. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
-trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
-spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
-picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
-X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
-Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
-this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
-with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
-with an expencive door stop.</p>
-
-<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
-important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
-listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
-feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
-allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
-requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
-to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
-
-<p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
-wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
-to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
-individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
-used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
-new laptop now. :)</p>
-
-<p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
-today. This is the release announcement:</p>
-
-<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
-2013-07-03</strong></p>
-
-<p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
-
-<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
-
-<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
-Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
-out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
-network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
-services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
-and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
-environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
-the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
-installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
-database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
-directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
-desktop contains
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
-than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
-the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
-and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
-
-<p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
-this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
-Squeeze release.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
- <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
- submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
- brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
- <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
- they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
- menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
- <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
- multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
- X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
- too.</li>
- <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
- are too few to make the package useful.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
- <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
- <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
- up for some language options.</li>
- <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
- <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
- <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
- d-i is doing it.</li>
- <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
- debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
- <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
- script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
- Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
- <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
- installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
- <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
- <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
- and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
- <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
- work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
-<ul>
- <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
- available yet (698840).</li>
- <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
-</ul>
-<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
-
-<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
-<ul>
- <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
- <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
-<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
-
-<p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
-<ul>
- <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
- <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
-<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
-
-<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
-
-<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
-perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
-working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
-needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
-affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
-controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
-including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
-process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
-they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
-debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
-info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
-info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
-info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
-info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
-info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
-firmware-ipw2x00
-firmware-ipw2x00
-Preconfiguring packages ...
-Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
-(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
-Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
-Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
+ <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
+solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
+cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
+keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
+One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
+storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
+writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
+service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
+of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
+lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
+I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
+have looked at a system called
+<a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
+mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
+
+<p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
+handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
+Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
+providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
+combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
+include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
+and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
+a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
+while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
+have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
+shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
+mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
+access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
+
+<p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
+package is included already. So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
+install s3ql</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
+Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
+<a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
+to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
+in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
+data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
+in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
+<a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
+Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
+Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
+the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
+the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
+account.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
+system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
+file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
+machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
+I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below. In addition, one need
+the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
+all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+[s3c]
+storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+backend-login: API-login
+backend-password: API-password
+fs-passphrase: local-password
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
+but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
+Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
+details and password to create it:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
+# mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+Enter backend login:
+Enter backend password:
+Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
+the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
+Enter encryption password:
+Confirm encryption password:
+Generating random encryption key...
+Creating metadata tables...
+Dumping metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Compressing and uploading metadata...
+Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
+# </pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
+Using 4 upload threads.
+Downloading and decompressing metadata...
+Reading metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Mounting filesystem...
+# df -h /s3ql
+Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
+s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name 1.0T 0 1.0T 0% /s3ql
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
+backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
+mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
+running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
+command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
+instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# umount.s3ql /s3ql
#
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
-printed instead:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
-info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
+correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
+crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
+mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
+file system:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
+Using cached metadata.
+File system seems clean, checking anyway.
+Checking DB integrity...
+Creating temporary extra indices...
+Checking lost+found...
+Checking cached objects...
+Checking names (refcounts)...
+Checking contents (names)...
+Checking contents (inodes)...
+Checking contents (parent inodes)...
+Checking objects (reference counts)...
+Checking objects (backend)...
+..processed 5000 objects so far..
+..processed 10000 objects so far..
+..processed 15000 objects so far..
+Checking objects (sizes)...
+Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
+Checking blocks (refcounts)...
+Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
+Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
+Checking inodes (refcounts)...
+Checking inodes (sizes)...
+Checking extended attributes (names)...
+Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
+Checking symlinks (inodes)...
+Checking directory reachability...
+Checking unix conventions...
+Checking referential integrity...
+Dropping temporary indices...
+Backing up old metadata...
+Dumping metadata...
+..objects..
+..blocks..
+..inodes..
+..inode_blocks..
+..symlink_targets..
+..names..
+..contents..
+..ext_attributes..
+Compressing and uploading metadata...
+Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
#
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
-me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
-
-<p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
-kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
-the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
-download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
-the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
-requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
-non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
-<tt>apt-get install</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
-machine.</p>
-
-<p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
-this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
-finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
-#655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
-firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
-from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
-which check that services are running, working, and return the
-expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
-test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
-installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
-operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
-online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
-configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
-
-<p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
-Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
-complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
-happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
-suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
-cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
-When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
-using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
-working packages to get it working. And ad the packages changed name
-from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
-debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
-packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
-would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
-right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
-
-<p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
-administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
-test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
-any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
-the problem.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
-please join us on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
-irc.debian.org</a> and the
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
-list.</p>
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
+quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
+amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
+house. Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
+which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
+Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
+Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
+network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
+size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
+working set.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
+time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
+busy:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
+ --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
+Using 8 upload threads.
+Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
+metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default. To ensure the
+file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
+file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
+s3qlctrl:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
+# s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
+cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
+storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
+a report:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# s3qlstat /s3ql
+Directory entries: 9141
+Inodes: 9143
+Data blocks: 8851
+Total data size: 22049.38 MB
+After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
+After compression: 21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
+Database size: 2.39 MB (uncompressed)
+(some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
+storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
+<a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
+<a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
+<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
+<a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
+<a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>. The latter even
+accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
+them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
+quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
+best.</p>
+
+<p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
+and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
+told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
+science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
+poster is titled
+"<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
+Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
+Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
+Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
+and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
+
+<p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
+check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
+a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
+it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
+test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
+no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
+directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
+
+<p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
+work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
+<a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
+provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
+a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
+access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
+only read from it.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
-Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
-globe. And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
-#debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
-worked. We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
-help us with translations. And today I managed to get an interview
-with him, to learn more about him.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
-which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
-party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
-friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
-country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
-community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
-began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
-constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
-field.</p>
-
-<p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
-provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
-activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
-of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
-software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
-the only one we have in our country.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
+ <title>EU-domstolen bekreftet i dag at datalagringsdirektivet er ulovlig</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/EU_domstolen_bekreftet_i_dag_at_datalagringsdirektivet_er_ulovlig.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/EU_domstolen_bekreftet_i_dag_at_datalagringsdirektivet_er_ulovlig.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 8 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I dag kom endelig avgjørelsen fra EU-domstolen om
+datalagringsdirektivet, som ikke overraskende ble dømt ulovlig og i
+strid med borgernes grunnleggende rettigheter. Hvis du lurer på hva
+datalagringsdirektivet er for noe, så er det
+<a href="http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75005313/tema-dine-digitale-spor-datalagringsdirektivet">en
+flott dokumentar tilgjengelig hos NRK</a> som jeg tidligere
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html">har
+anbefalt</a> alle å se.</p>
-<p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
-even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
-it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
-educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
-love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
-technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
-ways to contribute.</p>
-
-<p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
-configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
-haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
-areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
-software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
-one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
-environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
-for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
-from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
-have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
+<p>Her er et liten knippe nyhetsoppslag om saken, og jeg regner med at
+det kommer flere ut over dagen. Flere kan finnes
+<a href="http://www.mylder.no/?drill=datalagringsdirektivet&intern=1">via
+mylder</a>.</p>
-<p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
-maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
-took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
-Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
-time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
-with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
-out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
-it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
-
-<p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
-availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
-scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
-only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
-lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
-project.</p>
+<p><ul>
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
+<li><a href="http://e24.no/digital/eu-domstolen-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig/22879592">EU-domstolen:
+Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig</a> - e24.no 2014-04-08
-<p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
-disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
-project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
-a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story. I'd like to see
-Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
-ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
-lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
-opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
-to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
-
-<p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
-with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
-to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
-on.</p>
+<li><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/EU-domstolen-Datalagringsdirektivet-er-ulovlig-7529032.html">EU-domstolen:
+Datalagringsdirektivet er ulovlig</a> - aftenposten.no 2014-04-08
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+<li><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/politikk/Krever-DLD-stopp-i-Norge-7530086.html">Krever
+DLD-stopp i Norge</a> - aftenposten.no 2014-04-08
-<p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
-daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
-am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
-Enlightenment project a lot!),
-<a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
-use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
-<a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
-get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
-stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+<li><a href="http://www.p4.no/story.aspx?id=566431">Apenes: - En
+gledens dag</a> - p4.no 2014-04-08
-<p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
-now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
-that:</p>
+<li><a href="http://www.nrk.no/norge/_-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig-1.11655929">EU-domstolen:
+– Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig</a> - nrk.no 2014-04-08</li>
-<ul>
+<li><a href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/data-og-nett/eu-domstolen-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig/a/10130280/">EU-domstolen:
+Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig</a> - vg.no 2014-04-08</li>
-<li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2014/04/08/nyheter/innenriks/datalagringsdirektivet/personvern/32711646/">-
+Vi bør skrote hele datalagringsdirektivet</a> - dagbladet.no
+2014-04-08</li>
-<li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
- experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
- of teenagers more?</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.digi.no/928137/eu-domstolen-dld-er-ugyldig">EU-domstolen:
+DLD er ugyldig</a> - digi.no 2014-04-08</li>
-<li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
- be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
- other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
- them!)</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/european-court-declares-data-retention-directive-invalid-1.1754150">European
+court declares data retention directive invalid</a> - irishtimes.com
+2014-04-08</li>
-<li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
- lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
- person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/08/us-eu-data-ruling-idUSBREA370F020140408?feedType=RSS">EU
+court rules against requirement to keep data of telecom users</a> -
+reuters.com 2014-04-08</li>
</ul>
-
-<p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
-example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
-it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
-people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
-very hard to convert against their will.</p>
+</p>
+
+<p>Jeg synes det er veldig fint at nok en stemme slår fast at
+totalitær overvåkning av befolkningen er uakseptabelt, men det er
+fortsatt like viktig å beskytte privatsfæren som før, da de
+teknologiske mulighetene fortsatt finnes og utnyttes, og jeg tror
+innsats i prosjekter som
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a> og
+<a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnadsnett</a> er viktigere enn
+noen gang.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2014-04-08 12:10</strong>: Kronerullingen for å
+stoppe datalagringsdirektivet i Norge gjøres hos foreningen
+<a href="http://www.digitaltpersonvern.no/">Digitalt Personvern</a>,
+som har samlet inn 843 215,- så langt men trenger nok mye mer hvis
+
+ikke Høyre og Arbeiderpartiet bytter mening i saken. Det var
+<a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/parliament-issues/48650">kun
+partinene Høyre og Arbeiderpartiet</a> som stemte for
+Datalagringsdirektivet, og en av dem må bytte mening for at det skal
+bli flertall mot i Stortinget. Se mer om saken
+<a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/issues/69-innfore-datalagringsdirektivet">Holder
+de ord</a>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 1 Apr 2014 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
+2014-04-08, in 7 days. But there are heaps of machines still running
+Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
+upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
+comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
+new operating system. Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
+machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
+are already well known and covered elsewhere. Most of them involve
+leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
+trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
+to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
+the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
+operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
+operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
+system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
+programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
+The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
+drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
+system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing. It is
+a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
+from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
+project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
+Linux.</p>
+
+<p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
+shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
+There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
+allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
+click directly from the Internet. Check out the
+<a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
+project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
+Windows before metro).</p>
+
+<p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
+operating systems. I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
+virtual machine. The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
+fine as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, my main test application
+is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
+seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
+the disk after the installation. So no luck with that test software.
+No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
+I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
+to work just fine. If you like Windows and want to keep running your
+old Windows binaries, check it out by
+<a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
+installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
+image.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>There is a certain cross-over between the
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
-project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
-effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
-Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 30 Mar 2014 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
+keep gaining new users. Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
+wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
+contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-<p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
-days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
-getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
+<p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
+live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
+work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent. Additionally,
+I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
+last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
+
+<p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
+ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
+and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
-<p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
-opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
-each other.</p>
+<p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
+can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
+hunger.</p>
<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?</strong></p>
-<p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
-first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
-[Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
-London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
-Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
-it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
-was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
-day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
-over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
-been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
-still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
-we'll get there one day.</p>
+<p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
+with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
+started looking for an alternative. Even though I highly value and
+respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
+change to a more robust and stable alternative. As far as I was using
+Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
+Debian and configure an LTSP server myself. Surprised, I discovered
+that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
+and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
+running. I just loved it.</p>
<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?</strong></p>
-<p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
-it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
-that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
-very high quality work.</p>
-
-<p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
-set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
-with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
-helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
-community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
+<p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
+tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
+complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
+other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
+be made of steel.</p>
<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?</strong></p>
-<p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
-separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
-what I originally rambled on about)</p>
-
-<p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
-project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
-think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
-content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
-on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
-years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
-concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
-more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
-myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
-currently.</p>
-
-<p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
-for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
-their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
-educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
-have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
-much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
-autonomous.</p>
+<p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
+
+<p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
+amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
+stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
+resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
+or dropped.</p>
+
+<p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
+this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
+more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
+discourage many people too.</p>
<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-<p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
-Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
-some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
-particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
-so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
-
-<p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
-git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
-which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
-while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
-Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
-it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
-up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
-X.</p>
-
-<p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
-using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
-people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
-it :p)
+<p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
+Virtualbox.</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 think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
-many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
-don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
-that.</p>
-
-<p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
-problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
-advantage of that.</p>
-
-<p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
-some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
-Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
-general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
-Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
-that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
-best solution for them.</p>
-
-<p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
-educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
-make a decision that would work for them.</p>
+<p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
+attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
+really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
+the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
+few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
+Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
+different level of studies. I believe free and open software will
+increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
+first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
-the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
-or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
-last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
-on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
-The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
-control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
-turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
-not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
-i915 driver used by the
-<a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
-EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
-
-<p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
-i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
-/etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
-option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
-can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
-
-<pre>
-echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
-update-initramfs -u -k all
-</pre>
-
-<p>Since March 2012 there is
-<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
-mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
-hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
-brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
-<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
-intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
-<tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
-struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
-number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
-number.</p>
-
-<p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
--vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
- 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
- (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
- Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
- Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
- ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
- <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
- Latency: 0
- Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
- Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
- Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
- Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
- Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
- Capabilities: <access denied>
- Kernel driver in use: i915
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
- ...
- /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
- { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
- ...
-}
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
-<tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
-invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
-<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
-(at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
-developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
-yet shown up in
-<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
-web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
-emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
-the Debian bug tracking system instead as
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
-sure the patch is not lost.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
-with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
-worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
-something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
-the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
-have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
-this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
-developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
-developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
-during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
-you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
+ <title>Dokumentaren om Datalagringsdirektivet sendes endelig på NRK</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Foreningen NUUG</a> melder i natt at
+NRK nå har bestemt seg for
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/NRK_viser_filmen_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_f_rste_gang_2014_03_31.shtml">når
+den norske dokumentarfilmen om datalagringsdirektivet skal
+sendes</a> (se <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2832844/">IMDB</a>
+for detaljer om filmen) . Første visning blir på NRK2 mandag
+2014-03-31 kl. 19:50, og deretter visninger onsdag 2014-04-02
+kl. 12:30, fredag 2014-04-04 kl. 19:40 og søndag 2014-04-06 kl. 15:10.
+Jeg har sett dokumentaren, og jeg anbefaler enhver å se den selv. Som
+oppvarming mens vi venter anbefaler jeg Bjørn Stærks kronikk i
+Aftenposten fra i går,
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/Autoritar-gjokunge-7514915.html">Autoritær
+gjøkunge</a>, der han gir en grei skisse av hvor ille det står til med
+retten til privatliv og beskyttelsen av demokrati i Norge og resten
+verden, og helt riktig slår fast at det er vi i databransjen som
+sitter med nøkkelen til å gjøre noe med dette. Jeg har involvert meg
+i prosjektene <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">dugnadsnett.no</a>
+og <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">FreedomBox</a> for å
+forsøke å gjøre litt selv for å bedre situasjonen, men det er mye
+hardt arbeid fra mange flere enn meg som gjenstår før vi kan sies å ha
+gjenopprettet balansen.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg regner med at nettutgaven dukker opp på
+<a href="http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75005313/tema-dine-digitale-spor-datalagringsdirektivet">NRKs
+side om filmen om datalagringsdirektivet</a> om fem dager. Hold et
+øye med siden, og tips venner og slekt om at de også bør se den.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
-today. This is the release announcement:</p>
-
-<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
-2013-06-10</strong></p>
-
-<p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
-alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
-
-<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
-
-<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
-Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
-out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
-network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
-services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
-and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
-environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
-the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
-installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
-database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
-directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
-desktop contains
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
-than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
-the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
-and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
-
-<p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
-this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
-Squeeze release.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
-<li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
-<li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
-<li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
-<li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
-<li>Updated translation of the installation.
-<li>New Romanian translation.
-<li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
-<li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
-<li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
-<li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
-<li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
-<li>More testsuite tests.
-<li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
-<li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
-
-<li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
-LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
-
-<li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
-them up with GOsa².</li>
-
-<li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
-
-<li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
-slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
-entered password). </li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
-
-<li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
-available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
-missing import feature).</li>
-
-<li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
-
-<li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
-own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
-unfixed.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
-
-<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
-
-<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
+ <title>Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
+allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
+demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
+changed since it was created? Or, did you ever need to document that
+a given document was received at some point in time, like some
+archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
+was received? The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
+trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
+that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
+
+<p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
+"stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
+looked a given way. Such
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
+have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
+called a
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
+timestamping service</a>. <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
+Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
+few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
+3161</a>. The mechanism is simple. Create a hash of the file in
+question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
+the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
+signed hash + timestamp. Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
+request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
+used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
+the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
+checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
+There are several commercial services around providing such
+timestamping. A quick search for
+"<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
+service</a>" pointed me to at least
+<a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
+<a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
+Vadis</a>,
+<a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
+and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
+Trust Finder</a>. The system work as long as the private key of the
+trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
+
+<p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
+timestamp services available for everyone. I've been looking for one
+for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
+<a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
+Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
+<a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
+blog by David Müller</a>. I then found
+<a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
+good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
+Greifswald.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
+both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service. See
+the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details. The
+following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
+for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+set -e
+url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
+caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
+reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
+resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
+cafile=chain.txt
+if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
+ wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
+fi
+openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
+ | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
+openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
+openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
+base64 < "$resfile"
+rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
+is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
+about the signature to STDERR. Note that due to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
+in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
+and remove the last line. Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
+curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
+Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
+my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
+to set up?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
+children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
+movie is not straight forward. My preferred method at the moment is
+to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
+Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file. This way the
+subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
+just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
+DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them). I've also
+tried using
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
+and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
+and program
+<a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
+written by Bastian Blank. It is
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
+already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
+of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
+structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
+and only read those blocks from the DVD. This work surprisingly well,
+and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
+this method.</p>
+
+<p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
+20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection. The most common
+problem is
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
+using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
+Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
+players to fail too). A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
+DVD structures, as the python library
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
+there is a overlap between objects</a>. An equally rare problem claim
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
+value is out of range</a>. No idea what is going on there. I wish I
+knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
+collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
+
+<p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
+python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Norsk utgave av Alaveteli / WhatDoTheyKnow på trappene</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norsk_utgave_av_Alaveteli___WhatDoTheyKnow_p__trappene.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norsk_utgave_av_Alaveteli___WhatDoTheyKnow_p__trappene.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 16 Mar 2014 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Det offentlige Norge har mye kunnskap og informasjon. Men hvordan
+kan en få tilgang til den på en enkel måte? Takket være et lite
+knippe lover og tilhørende forskrifter, blant annet
+<a href="http://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2006-05-19-16">offentlighetsloven</a>,
+<a href="http://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2003-05-09-31">miljøinformasjonsloven</a>
+og
+<a href="http://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1967-02-10/">forvaltningsloven</a>
+har en rett til å spørre det offentlige og få svar. Men det finnes
+intet offentlig arkiv over hva andre har spurt om, og dermed risikerer en
+å måtte forstyrre myndighetene gang på gang for å få tak i samme
+informasjonen på nytt. <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">Britiske
+mySociety</a> har laget tjenesten
+<a href="http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/">WhatDoTheyKnow</a> som gjør
+noe med dette. I Storbritannia blir WhatdoTheyKnow brukt i
+<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2011/07/01/whatdotheyknows-share-of-central-government-foi-requests-q2-2011/">ca
+15% av alle innsynsforespørsler mot sentraladministrasjonen</a>.
+Prosjektet heter <a href="http://www.alaveteli.org/">Alaveteli</A>, og
+er takk i bruk en rekke steder etter at løsningen ble generalisert og
+gjort mulig å oversette. Den hjelper borgerne med å be om innsyn,
+rådgir ved purringer og klager og lar alle se hvilke henvendelser som
+er sendt til det offentlige og hvilke svar som er kommet inn, i et
+søkpart arkiv. Her i Norge holder vi i foreningen NUUG på å få opp en
+norsk utgave av Alaveteli, og her trenger vi din hjelp med
+oversettelsen.</p>
+
+<p>Så langt er 76 % av Alaveteli oversatt til norsk bokmål, men vi
+skulle gjerne vært oppe i 100 % før lansering. Oversettelsen gjøres
+på <a href="https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/alaveteli/">Transifex,
+der enhver som registrerer seg</a> og ber om tilgang til
+bokmålsoversettelsen får bidra. Vi har satt opp en test av tjenesten
+(som ikke sender epost til det offentlige, kun til oss som holder på å
+sette opp tjenesten) på maskinen
+<a href="http://alaveteli-dev.nuug.no/">alaveteli-dev.nuug.no</a>, der
+en kan se hvordan de oversatte meldingen blir seende ut på nettsiden.
+Når tjenesten lanseres vil den hete
+<a href="https://www.mimesbrønn.no/">Mimes brønn</a>, etter
+visdomskilden som Odin måtte gi øyet sitt for å få drikke i. Den
+nettsiden er er ennå ikke klar til bruk.</p>
+
+<p>Hvis noen vil oversette til nynorsk også, så skal vi finne ut
+hvordan vi lager en flerspråklig tjeneste. Men i første omgang er
+fokus på bokmålsoversettelsen, der vi selv har nok peiling til å ha
+fått oversatt 76%, men trenger hjelp for å komme helt i mål. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
+project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
+making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
+communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
+friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
+going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
+release (0.2).</p>
+
+<p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
+new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
+Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
+system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
+file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
+where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
+the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
+boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
+and build using
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
+with a user with sudo access to become root:
-<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
+<pre>
+git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
+ freedom-maker
+sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
+ mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
+ u-boot-tools
+make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
+</pre>
-</ul>
+<p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
+devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
+want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to <a
+href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
+vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
+kpartx call.</p>
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
-<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
+<p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
+method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
+the preseed values:</p>
-<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
+<pre>
+url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
+</pre>
-<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
+<p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
+recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
+currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
+'<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
+installation will get the installation going. This affect all
+installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
+
+<p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
+us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
+irc.debian.org)</a> and
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
+mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
+storing user home directories and data. The design for handling this
+in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
+to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
+the clients take care of the rest. I was reminded about the need to
+document this better when one of the customers of
+<a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
+on the board of directors, asked about how to do this. The steps to
+get this working are the following:</p>
+
+<p><ol>
+
+<li>Add new storage server in DNS. I use nas-server.intern as the
+example host here.</li>
+
+<li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
+all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
+
+<li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
+tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
+
+</ol></p>
+
+<p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here. Follow the
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
+in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
+started).</p>
+
+<p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
+relevant subnets or machines:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
+Export list for nas-server:
+/storage 10.0.0.0/8
+root@tjener:~#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
+/storage export. With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
+netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
+NFS access.</p>
+
+<p>The next step is to update LDAP. This can not be done using GOsa²,
+because it lack a module for automount. Instead, use ldapvi and add
+the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
+bottom of the document. The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
+wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
+need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+objectClass: automount
+cn: nas-server
+automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+
+add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+objectClass: top
+objectClass: automountMap
+ou: auto.nas-server
+
+add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+objectClass: automount
+cn: /
+automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
+tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
+directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
+
+<p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
+the storage server directly by just visiting the
+/tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
+workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff