<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
-<a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
-init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
-init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
-of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/lib/init/init-d-script
-### BEGIN INIT INFO
-# Provides: rsyslog
-# Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
-# Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
-# X-Stop-After: sendsigs
-# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
-# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
-# Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
-# Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
-# It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
-# used as a drop-in replacement.
-### END INIT INFO
-DESC="enhanced syslogd"
-DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
-script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
-info/comments.</p>
-
-<p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
-/lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-
-# Define LSB log_* functions.
-# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
-# and status_of_proc is working.
-. /lib/lsb/init-functions
-
-#
-# Function that starts the daemon/service
-
-#
-do_start()
-{
- # Return
- # 0 if daemon has been started
- # 1 if daemon was already running
- # 2 if daemon could not be started
- start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
- || return 1
- start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
- $DAEMON_ARGS \
- || return 2
- # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
- # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
- # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
-}
-
-#
-# Function that stops the daemon/service
-#
-do_stop()
-{
- # Return
- # 0 if daemon has been stopped
- # 1 if daemon was already stopped
- # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
- # other if a failure occurred
- start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
- RETVAL="$?"
- [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
- # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
- # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
- # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
- # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
- # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
- # sleep for some time.
- start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
- [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
- # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
- rm -f $PIDFILE
- return "$RETVAL"
-}
-
-#
-# Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
-#
-do_reload() {
- #
- # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
- # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
- # then implement that here.
- #
- start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
- return 0
-}
-
-SCRIPTNAME=$1
-scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
-echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
-if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
- script="$1"
- shift
- . $script
-else
- exit 0
-fi
-
-NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
-PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
-
-# Exit if the package is not installed
-#[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
-
-# Read configuration variable file if it is present
-[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
-
-# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
-. /lib/init/vars.sh
-
-case "$1" in
- start)
- [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_start
- case "$?" in
- 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
- esac
- ;;
- stop)
- [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_stop
- case "$?" in
- 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
- esac
- ;;
- status)
- status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
- ;;
- #reload|force-reload)
- #
- # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
- # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
- #
- #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
- #do_reload
- #log_end_msg $?
- #;;
- restart|force-reload)
- #
- # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
- # 'force-reload' alias
- #
- log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
- do_stop
- case "$?" in
- 0|1)
- do_start
- case "$?" in
- 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
- 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
- *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
- esac
- ;;
- *)
- # Failed to stop
- log_end_msg 1
- ;;
- esac
- ;;
- *)
- echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
- exit 3
- ;;
-esac
-
-:
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
-lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
-work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
-optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
-
-<p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
-the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
-get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
-robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
-and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
+ <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>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
-remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
-Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
-that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
-missing in Debian. The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
-for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
-2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
-from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
-repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
-others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
-mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
-NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
-
-<p>The source is now available from
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
+ <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>
+torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
+ --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
+</pre></blockquote></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>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>The
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
-program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
-create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
-debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
-stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
-of a plan to simplify the build system for
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
-project</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
-the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
-based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
-Raspberry Pi.</p>
-
-<p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
-architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
-code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
-Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
-allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
-Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>. First, the
-<tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
-call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
-generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
-vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
-two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
-fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
-given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
-partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a <tt>--variant
-variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
-Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
-<tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
-as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
-most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
-upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
-available from
-<a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
-upstream project page</a>.</p>
-
-<p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
-create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
-binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
-list:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-set -e # Exit on first error
-rootdir="$1"
-cd "$rootdir"
-cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
-deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
-EOF
-# Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
-# install a kernel somewhere too.
-wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
- -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
-chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
-mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
-touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
-chroot $rootdir rpi-update
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
-to build the image:</p>
+ <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>
<pre>
-sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
- --variant minbase \
- --arch armel \
- --distribution jessie \
- --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
- --image test.img \
- --size 600M \
- --bootsize 64M \
- --boottype vfat \
- --log-level debug \
- --verbose \
- --no-kernel \
- --no-extlinux \
- --root-password raspberry \
- --hostname raspberrypi \
- --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
- --customize `pwd`/customize \
- --package netbase \
- --package git-core \
- --package binutils \
- --package ca-certificates \
- --package wget \
- --package kmod
-</pre></p>
-
-<p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
-rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
-exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
-/etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
-set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
-that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
-using a non-free binary blob.</p>
-
-<p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
-probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
-build dependency list.</p>
-
-<p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
-on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
-optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
-than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
+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.
+
+See the status page[8] for the complete list.
+
+ [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
+
+How to report bugs
+------------------
+
+&lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
+
+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.
+
+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>Det er jo makta som er mest sårbar ved massiv overvåkning av Internett</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_er_jo_makta_som_er_mest_s_rbar_ved_massiv_overv_kning_av_Internett.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Det_er_jo_makta_som_er_mest_s_rbar_ved_massiv_overv_kning_av_Internett.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 26 Oct 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>De siste måneders eksponering av
-<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Her-er-Edvard-Snowdens-mest-omtalte-avsloringer-7351734.html">den
-totale overvåkningen som foregår i den vestlige verden dokumenterer
-hvor sårbare vi er</a>. Men det slår meg at de som er mest sårbare
-for dette, myndighetspersoner på alle nivåer, neppe har innsett at de
-selv er de mest interessante personene å lage profiler på, for å kunne
-påvirke dem.</p>
-
-<p>For å ta et lite eksempel: Stortingets nettsted,
-<a href="http://www.stortinget.no/">www.stortinget.no</a> (og
-forsåvidt også
-<a href="http://data.stortinget.no/">data.stortinget.no</a>),
-inneholder informasjon om det som foregår på Stortinget, og jeg antar
-de største brukerne av informasjonen der er representanter og
-rådgivere på Stortinget. Intet overraskende med det. Det som derimot
-er mer skjult er at Stortingets nettsted bruker
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics">Google
-Analytics</a>, hvilket gjør at enhver som besøker nettsidene der også
-rapporterer om besøket via Internett-linjer som passerer Sverige,
-England og videre til USA. Det betyr at informasjon om ethvert besøk
-på stortingets nettsider kan snappes opp av svensk, britisk og USAs
-etterretningsvesen. De kan dermed holde et øye med hvilke
-Stortingssaker stortingsrepresentantene synes er interessante å sjekke
-ut, og hvilke sider rådgivere og andre på stortinget synes er
-interessant å besøke, når de gjør det og hvilke andre representanter
-som sjekker de samme sidene omtrent samtidig. Stortingets bruk av
-Google Analytics gjør det dermed enkelt for utenlands etteretning å
-spore representantenes aktivitet og interesse. Hvis noen av
-representantene bruker Google Mail eller noen andre tjenestene som
-krever innlogging, så vil det være enda enklere å finne ut nøyaktig
-hvilke personer som bruker hvilke nettlesere og dermed knytte
-informasjonen opp til enkeltpersoner på Stortinget.</p>
-
-<p>Og jo flere nettsteder som bruker Google Analytics, jo bedre
-oversikt over stortingsrepresentantenes lesevaner og interesse blir
-tilgjengelig for svensk, britisk og USAs etterretning. Hva de kan
-bruke den informasjonen til overlater jeg til leseren å undres
-over.</p>
+ <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>A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
-<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
-batman-adv mesh technology</a>. I want to gain some experience to see
-if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
-Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
-mesh network around the park where I live. Batman-adv is a layer 2
-mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
-as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
-
-<p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
-around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv. So
-instead, I started playing with a
-<a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
-get it working as a mesh node. My idea is to use it to create a mesh
-node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
-the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
-network. This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
-WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
-non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh. This in turn is useful for
-Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
-Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
-phone and message each other for free. The reason is that Android
-phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
-the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted. But if
-they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
-every client on the local network.</p>
-
-<p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
-and a script
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
-to create the Raspberry Pi boot image. I'm using Debian Jessie (and
-not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
-Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
-image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now. Also, as
-Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
-Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit. I hope
-the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
-support.</p>
-
-<p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
-after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
-
-<p><pre>
-% wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
- https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
-% sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
-% dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
+ <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>
+% 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></p>
-
-<p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
-wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node. At least it does for
-me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
-ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
-earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
-
-<p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either. I bought
-everything over the counter in shops nearby. If I had ordered online
-from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
-
-<p><table>
-
-<tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
-<tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
-
-</table></p>
-
-<p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
-connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
-floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
-play-node I use to develop the image building script. And some times
-I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it. I look forward
-to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
-and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<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>
+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>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>
+PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
+</pre></blockquote></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>Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
-(with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
-web page. Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
-easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github. If
-you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
-libspykee-perl github repository</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><blockquote><pre>
+base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
+apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<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>
+
+<p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
+this recipe work for you. :)</p>
+
+<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>
+
+<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>
+
+<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:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
+export PATH
+isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
+tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
+
+<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>
+
+<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>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>
+ <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>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>
+ <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>
+
+</ul>
+
+<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>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>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 8 Oct 2013 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
-Salvador had published a
-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
-Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux profile. This is the profile intended for use at home or
-on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
-services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
-in other word a single user machine). The result is 11 minutes long,
-and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
-Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
-showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
-of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
-other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
-advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
-Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
-computers without hard drives by installing one central
-<a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
-
-<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
-
-<p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux? Please let
-me know. :)</p>
+ <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>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
+</pre></blockquote></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>Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
-Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team. The
-complete announcement text can be found at
-<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
-section</a>, translated to several languages. Please check it out.</p>
-
-<p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon. One
-can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
-partition is too small. A workaround is to extend the partition (use
-lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</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