<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>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
+wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
+these. :)</p>
+
+<p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
+Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
+Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
+more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
+to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
+earmarked</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
+hope you will to. :)</p>
+
+<p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
+create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
+documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
+take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
+donated. Are you next?</p>
+
+<p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
+Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
+statement under the heading
+<a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
+Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
+Norwegian government. So far 499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
+too.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
+networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
+areas, depending on the radio technology used. Normal wifi equipment
+can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
+successful examples like
+<a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
+<a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
+(see
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
+for a large list</a>) around the globe. To give you an idea how it
+work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
+can be seen from their
+<a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
+updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
+automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
+There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
+and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
+
+<p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
+to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
+href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
+my recent involvement in
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
+finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
+Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
+when possible, given that most communication between people are
+between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
+communication patterns). It also allow people to communicate without
+any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
+private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
+important over the years.</p>
+
+<p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
+working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
+<a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania. They seem to
+have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
+<a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
+Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
+behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
+<a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>. Unfortunately the wiki
+site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
+reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
+the new project. A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
+from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks. I
+came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
+speakers about this talk (from
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
+
+<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
+
+<p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
+There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
+figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
+given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
+is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
+completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
+batman-adv for now. It sure help me to know that the very cool
+<a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
+is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
+organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
+less industrialized communities. Check out this cool video presenting
+that project (from
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
+
+<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
+
+<p>According to the wikipedia page on
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
+mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
+packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
+B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
+based community mesh networks.</p>
+
+<p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
+(as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
+network. One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
+vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
+computer. The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
+least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up. A
+<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
+introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project. These are
+the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
+
+<p><table>
+<tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
+<tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
+<tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
+<td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
+<td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
+</table></p>
+
+<p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
+in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers. (See a nice post from
+VillageTelco about
+"<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
+about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
+for details.) When these settings are activated and you have some
+other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
+network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
+any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
+
+<p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
+but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
+firmware supporting batman-adv. If anyone know how to use that old
+wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
+
+<p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
+us on IRC, either channel
+<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
+or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
+irc.freenode.net.</p>
+
+<p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
+research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
+and Innovation called
+<a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
+reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
+learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
+Grünerløkka in Oslo. So mesh networks are also interesting for
+commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
+to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
+know have closed down the experiment. Perhaps Telenor or others would
+be interested in a cooperation?</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
+by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
+batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
+mesh system.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 2 Aug 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It has been a while since my last update. Since last summer, I
-have worked on a Norwegian
-<a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
-<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
-to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
-law. Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
-number of strings to translate. Due to real life constraints, I have
-not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
-I found time to work on it again. Still lots of work left, but the
-first draft is nearing completion. I created a graph to show the
-progress of the translation:</p>
-
-<p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
-
-<p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
-proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
-drawings need to be fixed. There are probably also some index entries
-missing that need to be added. This can be done by comparing the
-index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
-English docbook version with the paper version. Last, the colophon
-page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
-done. I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
-of the index pages. All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
-docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
-Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
-
-<p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
-knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
-with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
-translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
-redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
-around? There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
-If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
-project files currently available from
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
-
-<p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
-the updated
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
-and
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
-are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
-github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
-saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
-today. This is the release announcement:</p>
-
-<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
-2013-07-27</strong></p>
-
-<p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-7.1+edu0~b0, 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 fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
-this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
-Squeeze release.</p>
-
-<p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
-versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
-release.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
- for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
-<li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
- packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
- by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
- installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
- and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
-<li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
-<li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
-<li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
- crash bugs.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
- desktop=gnome installations.</li>
-<li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
- netinst CD.</li>
-<li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
- setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
-<li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
- install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
- with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
-<li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
- exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
- name setting at run time to work again.</li>
-<li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
- fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
- updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
-<li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
- (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
-<li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
-<li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
- not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
-<li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</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~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
-
-<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
-
-<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
-<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</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~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
-<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
-<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
-<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</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>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff