+ <item>
+ <title>First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://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="https://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>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
+ <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Today I switched to
+<a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
+new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
+my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
+<a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
+GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
+sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
+trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
+identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
+disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
+the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
+random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
+decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
+Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
+server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
+station from now on.</p>
+
+<p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
+Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
+performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
+user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
+environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
+package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
+<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
+for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
+is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
+package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
+will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
+file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
+
+<p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
+set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
+where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
+addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
+top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
+references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
+parameters are tuned:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
+ (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
+
+<li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
+ this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
+ 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
+
+<li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
+ systems.</li>
+
+<li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
+ /etc/fstab.</li>
+
+<li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
+
+<li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
+ cron.daily).</li>
+
+<li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
+ to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
+the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
+little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
+those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
+computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
+from getting the data on the disk (see
+<a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
+Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
+right thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
+it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
+indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
+
+<p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
+and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
+file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
+instead of during my work.</p>
+
+<p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
+this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
+
+<p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
+iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
+have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
+
+<p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
+there.</p>
+
+<p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
+as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
+disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
+the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
+without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
+disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
+back.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff