<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <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 have had many years ago, before the cloud
-storage providers showed up, have been 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:
+ <title>Hvordan vurderer regjeringen H.264-patentutfordringen?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2014 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>For en stund tilbake spurte jeg Fornyingsdepartementet om hvilke
+juridiske vurderinger rundt patentproblemstillingen som var gjort da
+H.264 ble tatt inn i <a href="http://standard.difi.no/">statens
+referansekatalog over standarder</a>. Stig Hornnes i FAD tipset meg
+om følgende som står i oppsumeringen til høringen om
+referansekatalogen versjon 2.0, som jeg siden ved hjelp av en
+innsynsforespørsel fikk tak i
+<a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=kongelig-resolusjon.pdf">PDF-utgaven av</a>
+datert 2009-06-03 (saksnummer 200803291, saksbehandler Henrik
+Linnestad).</p>
+
+<p>Der står det følgende om problemstillingen:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<strong>4.4 Patentproblematikk</strong>
+
+<p>NUUG og Opera ser det som særlig viktig at forslagene knyttet til
+lyd og video baserer seg på de royalty-frie standardene Vorbis, Theora
+og FLAC.</p>
+
+<p>Kommentarene relaterer seg til at enkelte standarder er åpne, men
+inneholder tekniske prosedyrer som det i USA (og noen andre land som
+Japan) er gitt patentrettigheter til. I vårt tilfelle berører dette
+spesielt standardene Mp3 og H.264, selv om Politidirektoratet peker på
+at det muligens kan være tilsvarende problematikk også for Theora og
+Vorbis. Dette medfører at det i USA kan kreves royalties for bruk av
+tekniske løsninger knyttet til standardene, et krav som også
+håndheves. Patenter kan imidlertid bare hevdes i de landene hvor
+patentet er gitt, så amerikanske patenter gjelder ikke andre steder
+enn USA.</p>
+
+<p>Spesielt for utvikling av fri programvare er patenter
+problematisk. GPL, en "grunnleggende" lisens for distribusjon av fri
+programvare, avviser at programvare kan distribueres under denne
+lisensen hvis det inneholder referanser til patenterte rutiner som
+utløser krav om royalties. Det er imidlertid uproblematisk å
+distribuere fri programvareløsninger under GPL som benytter de
+aktuelle standardene innen eller mellom land som ikke anerkjenner
+patentene. Derfor finner vi også flere implementeringer av Mp3 og
+H.264 som er fri programvare, lisensiert under GPL.</p>
+
+<p>I Norge og EU er patentlovgivningen langt mer restriktiv enn i USA,
+men det er også her mulig å få patentert metoder for løsning av et
+problem som relaterer seg til databehandling. Det er AIF bekjent ikke
+relevante patenter i EU eller Norge hva gjelder H.264 og Mp3, men
+muligheten for at det finnes patenter uten at det er gjort krav om
+royalties eller at det senere vil gis slike patenter kan ikke helt
+avvises.</p>
+
+<p>AIF mener det er et behov for å gi offentlige virksomheter mulighet
+til å benytte antatt royaltyfrie åpne standarder som et likeverdig
+alternativ eller i tillegg til de markedsledende åpne standardene.</p>
+
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det ser dermed ikke ut til at de har vurdert patentspørsmålet i
+sammenheng med opphavsrettsvilkår slik de er formulert for f.eks.
+Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid og Sorenson-verktøyene,
+der det kreves brukstillatelse for patenter som ikke er gyldige i
+Norge for å bruke disse verktøyene til annet en personlig og ikke
+kommersiell aktivitet når det gjelder H.264-video. Jeg må nok lete
+videre etter svar på det spørsmålet.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
+without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
+democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
+
+<p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
+surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
+the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
+is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
+a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
+between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
+to the people peeking on the wire. I
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
+this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
+lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
+that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
+documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
+<a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
+Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
+propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
+
+<p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
+providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
+looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
+the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
+go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
+Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
+emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
+in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
+set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
+set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
+were fairly easy, and
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
+source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github. I
+plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
+useful approach.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
+mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
+get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
+above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
+<tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
+the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
+exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
+this:</p>
<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
+torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
+ --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
</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>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
+address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
+
+<p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
+easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
+Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
+should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
+architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
+to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
+exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
+no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
+exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
+socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
+system.</p>
+
+<p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
+<tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
+SMTorP. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
+sent out
+<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
+announcement</a>:</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.
+<pre>
+The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
+Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
+
+Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
+various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
+and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
+Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
+roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
+hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
+pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
+
+For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
+installation instructions are available, including detailed
+instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
+setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
+for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
+of at least 5 characters!
+
+ [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
+
+Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
+tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
+reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
+the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
+Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
+
+Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
+mostly in Germany and Norway.
+
+About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+===============================
+
+Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], 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 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 more than 60 educational software
+packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
+schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
+environment.
+
+ [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
+ [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
+
+Full release notes and manual
+=============================
+
+Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
+and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
+list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
+the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
+available, see the manual translation overview[5].
+
+ [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
+ [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
+
+Where to get it
+---------------
+
+To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
+
+ * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
+ * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
+ * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
+
+The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
+
+New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
+===============================================================================
+
+
+Installation changes
+--------------------
+
+ * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
+
+Software updates
+----------------
+
+Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
+
+ * Linux kernel 3.16.x
+ * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
+ LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
+ choose one of the others see manual.)
+ * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
+ * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
+ * GOsa 2.7.4
+ * LTSP 5.5.4
+ * CUPS print system 1.7.5
+ * new boot framework: systemd
+ * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
+ * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
+ * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
+ * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
+ * golearn 0.9
+ * tuxpaint 0.9.22
+ * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
+ * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
+ installation.
+ * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
+ notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
+
+ [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
+ [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
+
+Fixed bugs
+----------
+
+ * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
+ DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
+ information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
+ * and many others.
+
+Documentation and translation updates
+-------------------------------------
+
+ * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
+ Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
+ Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
+
+Other changes
+-------------
+
+ * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
+ server takes more time.
+ * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
+ doesn't work.
+
+Regressions / known problems
+----------------------------
+
+ * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
+ exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
+ and Debian bug #762103).
+ * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
+ #764594). The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
+ * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
+ work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
+ Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
-<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 /mnt
-Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
-s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name 1.0T 0 1.0T 0% /s3ql
-#
-</pre></blockquote></p>
+See the status page[8] for the complete list.
-<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:
+ [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-# umount.s3ql /s3ql
-#
-</pre></blockquote></p>
+How to report bugs
+------------------
-<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>
+&lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
-<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></blockquote></p>
+About Debian
+============
+
+The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
+free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
+the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
+volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
+maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
+huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
+operating system.
-<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>
+Contact Information
+For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
+mail to press@debian.org.
+
+ [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
+</pre>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
+Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
+the surrounding countries. I had volunteered on behalf of the
+Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
+had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
+a row. There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
+regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
+<a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
+camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
+live.</p>
+
+<p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
+around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
+public</a> on the MakerConNordic account. The videos have the license
+NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
+<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
+Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>. Many great
+talks available. Check it out! :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
+alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
+operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
+and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
+and various options for each email address. This take a while for
+every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
+job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
+<a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
+listadmin program</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
+to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
+lists I recently took over:</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.
-#
+% time listadmin xiph
+fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
+fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
+
+real 0m1.709s
+user 0m0.232s
+sys 0m0.012s
+%
</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>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
+there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
+currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
+minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
+ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
+less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
+program.</p>
+
+<p>If you install
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
+package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
+with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
<p><blockquote><pre>
-# s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
-# s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
-#
+username username@example.org
+spamlevel 23
+default discard
+discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
+
+password secret
+adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
+mailman-list@lists.example.com
+
+password hidden
+other-list@otherserver.example.org
</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>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
+learn the details.</p>
+
+<p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
+the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
+generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
+variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</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)
-#
+PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
</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
-quire different and you will have to figure out what suit 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, 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>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
+can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
+initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
+lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
+quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
+email.</p>
+
+<p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
+mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
+process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
+time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
+software.</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>
+
+<p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
+configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
+PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
+sure why.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>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>
+ <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
+problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
+And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
+Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
+<a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
+package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
+to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
+
+<p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
+firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
+the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
+programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
+of this story.)</p>
+
+<p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
+values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
+into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
+in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
+preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
+isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
+for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
+will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
+packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
+isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
+
+<p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
+most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
+the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
+hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
+
+<p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
+firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
-<p><ul>
-
-<li><a href="http://e24.no/digital/eu-domstolen-datalagringsdirektivet-er-ugyldig/22879592">EU-domstolen:
-Datalagringsdirektivet er ugyldig</a> - e24.no 2014-04-08
-
-<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><blockquote><pre>
+base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
+apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
+</pre></blockquote></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>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
+both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
+do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both
+firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
+want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
+and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
+default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
+implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
-<li><a href="http://www.p4.no/story.aspx?id=566431">Apenes: - En
-gledens dag</a> - p4.no 2014-04-08
+<p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
+this recipe work for you. :)</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>
+<p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
+foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
+files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
+isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
+is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
-<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>
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+Task: isenkram-packages
+Section: hardware
+Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
+ Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
+ proposed.
+Test-new-install: show show
+Relevance: 8
+Packages: for-current-hardware
+
+Task: isenkram-firmware
+Section: hardware
+Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
+ Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
+ packages are proposed.
+Test-new-install: mark show
+Relevance: 8
+Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
+</pre></blockquote></p>
-<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>
+<p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
+should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
+/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
+list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
+look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
-<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>
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
+export PATH
+isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
+</pre></blockquote></p>
-<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>
+<p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
+tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
-<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>
+<p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
+installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
+--new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
+install.</p>
-</ul>
-</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: 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>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>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 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>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 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>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 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>
+<p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
+pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
+install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
+bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
+with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
+on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
+
+<p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
+
+<p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
+about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
+<a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
+got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
+developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
+This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
+Dibb.</p>
+
+<p>I just wrapped up
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
+new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
+download page</a>. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
+0.17.</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
+ <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
+ non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
+ <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
+ <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
+ <li>Fix include orders</li>
+ <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
+ <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
+ <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
+ the palette size is the same.</li>
+ <li>Fix array printing.</li>
+ <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
+ <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
+ <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
+ with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
-<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>
+</ul>
-<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>
+<p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
+Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
+project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)</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:
+ <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
+powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
+web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
+boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
+Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
+to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
+the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
+freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
+future. The
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
+status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
+work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
+but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
+recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
+
+<p>First, download the test ISO via
+<a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
+<a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
+or rsync (use
+ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
+The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
+12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
+install with some tweaking.</p>
+
+<p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
+(use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
-<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>
-
-<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>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>
-
-<pre>
-url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
-</pre>
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
+</pre></blockquote></p>
-<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>
+<p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
+optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
+and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
+due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
+
+<p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
+this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
+test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
+your need.</p>
+
+<p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
+root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
+education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
+or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
+metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
+graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
+once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
+days.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
+tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
+update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
+issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
+on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
+eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
+require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
+provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
+The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
+
+<p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
+quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
+installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</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>
+ <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
+to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
+tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
+etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
+any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
+its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
+sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
+project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
+get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
+into Debian</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
+the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
+he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
+over. And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
+
+<p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
+maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
+project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
+collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
+I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
+repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
+a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
+list</a>. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff