<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
+their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
+boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
+<a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
+Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
+get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
+I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
+<a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
+and started it using virt-manager.</p>
+
+<p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
+password) was to get the network operational. I followed
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
+instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
+commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
+kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
+pkill pfinet
+pkill devnode
+dhclient -v /dev/eth0
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
+upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
+enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
+
+<p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
+running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
+set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
+compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
+side.</p>
+
+<p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
+stuff:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
+deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
+EOF
+apt-get update
+apt-get dist-upgrade
+apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
+ sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
+update-alternatives --config runsystem
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
+<tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
+yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
+'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
+upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
+after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
+start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
+longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
+ssh instead.
+
+<p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
+fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
+figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
+irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
+the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
+adding this repository to the machine:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
+deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
+EOF
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
+http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
+unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
+BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+# aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
+i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
+i gdb - GNU Debugger
+i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
+i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
+i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
+i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
+i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
+i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
+i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
+i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
+i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
+i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
+i xorg - X.Org X Window System
+i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
+i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
+#
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
+X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
+the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
+command line stuff.<p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
+encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
+central control. It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
+activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth. At least
+I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
+details of every transaction are kept forever. This point is
+investigated in
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
+from December 2013, in the article
+"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
+Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
+Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
+Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. They
+analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
+addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
+of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
+money end up. This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
+our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
+activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
+Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
+flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
+address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
+we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
+thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
+mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
+tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
+large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
+from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
+
+<p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
+which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
+the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
+case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
+subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
+stolen bitcoins were deposited. Because such exchanges seem to serve
+as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
+few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
+money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
+present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
+</blockquote><p>
+
+<p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
+transaction log. The 2011 paper
+"<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
+the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
+summarized like this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+"Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
+complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
+public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
+attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
+public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
+users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
+a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
+allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
+this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
+derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
+two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
+complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
+anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
+techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
+an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
+market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
+is anonymous. It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites. Use
+cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
+sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
+find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
+analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
+useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
+the source. The company behind it provide
+<a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
+a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
+already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
+the Coverity system, and discovered that the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
+projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
+fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
+check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
+checking of the chrpath project</a>. It was
+added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
+these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
+error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
+of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
+is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
+the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
+<a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
+mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
+publish a new release. These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
+ <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.16 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a test suite check.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
+was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
+up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
+successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
+to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
+George</a>.</p>
+
+<!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
+life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
+student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
+Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
+voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
+a bit vacant right now however.</p>
+
+<p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
+(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
+around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
+it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
+network of that school together with a team of very interested and
+talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
+learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
+to help building another school's informational education concept from
+scratch.</p>
+
+<p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
+and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
+ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
+
+<p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
+and cycling.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
+booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
+have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
+own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
+"out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
+
+<p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
+<a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
+BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
+really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
+ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
+a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
+guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
+small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
+seemed rather uninterested.</p>
+
+<p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
+mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
+reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
+basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
+works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
+in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
+without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
+from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
+have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
+and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
+server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
+notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
+and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
+it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
+tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
+that it rocks!</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
+politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
+operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
+will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
+school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
+this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
+too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
+answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
+other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
+can list a few points about that:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
+ <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
+ <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
+all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
+year.</p>
+
+<p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
+run text tools. I use
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
+<a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
+text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
+based full-featured student management software with the two),
+<a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
+<a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
+coloured world called the WWW, I use
+<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
+(Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
+e-mail.</p>
+
+<p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
+are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
+least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
+kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
+which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
+Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
+Facebook now ;).</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
+side is what I have experienced.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
+that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
+grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
+to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
+see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
+students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
+desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
+they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
+that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
+software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
+networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
+not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
+already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
+if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
+that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
+plain criminal.</p>
+
+<p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
+method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
+founded an association named
+<a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
+just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
+area of free and open source software, for example the
+<a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
+Teckids and are the youth programme of
+<a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
+Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
+- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
+aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
+and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
+of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
+the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
+their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
+Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
+clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
+it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
+who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
+We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
+open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
+software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
+group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
+Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
+
+<p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
+being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
+that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
+but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
+
+<!--
+
+> * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
+
+That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
+community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
+
+ <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
+ free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
+ of the decision makers above;
+ <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
+ knowledge about free software
+
+If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
+
+-->
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Helga 18. og 19. januar 2014 arrangeres
+<a href="http://makerfaireoslo.no/no/program/dugnadsnett">Oslo Maker
+Faire</a>, og <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnadsnett for
+alle</a> har fått plass! Planen er å ha et bord med en plakat der vi
+forteller om hva Dugnadsnett for alle er for noe, og et lite verksted
+der vi hjelper folk som er interessert i å få opp sin egen mesh-node.
+Jeg gleder meg til å se hvordan prosjektet blir mottatt der.</p>
+
+<p>Målet med dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo er å få på plass et datanett
+for kommunikasjon ved hjelp av radio-repeaterstasjoner (kalt
+mesh-noder) som gjør at en kan direkte kommunisere med slekt, venner
+og bekjente i Oslo via andre som deltar i dugnadsnettet, samt gjøre
+det mulig komme ut på internett via dugnadsnettet. Første delmål er å
+kunne sende SMS-meldinger vha. IP-telefoni løsningen
+<a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project</a> mellom
+deltagerne i Dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo. Formålet er å ta tilbake
+kontrollen over egen nett-infrastruktur og gjøre det dyrere å bedrive
+massiv innsamling av informasjon om borgernes bruk av datanett.</p>
+
+<p>Høres dette interessant ut? Bli med på prosjektet, fortell oss
+hvor du kunne tenke deg å sette opp en radio-repeater (slik at folk i
+nærheten kan finne hverandre ved hjelp av
+<a href="http://flynor.net/mesh/mesh.php">kartet over planlagte og
+eksisterende radio-repeatere</A>), bli med på epostlisten
+<a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
+(at) nuug.no</a> og stikk innom
+<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">IRC-kanalen
+#dugnadsnett.no</a>. Så langt er det planlagt over 40
+radio-repeatere, med VPN-forbindelser via Internet for å la de delene
+av nettet som ikke når hverandre via radio kunne snakke med hverandre
+likevel.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
+but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
+had a new school administrator show up on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
+his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
+time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
+Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
+Germany a few years ago.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
+engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
+the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
+freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
+
+<p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
+from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
+projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
+system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
+(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
+(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
+system supporting various operating systems).</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
+coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
+source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
+introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Quick installation,</li>
+ <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
+ <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
+ <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
+ single company,</li>
+ <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
+ experience and problem solutions.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
+ the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
+ a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
+ working again reliably.
+
+ <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
+ little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
+ similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
+ as their base.
+
+ <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
+ configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
+ not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
+ configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
+ and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
+ network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
+
+ <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
+ contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
+ distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
+ Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
+ future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
+ schemes.</li>
+
+ <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
+ compared to Debian.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
+rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
+Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
+upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
+programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
+occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
+programming languages for teaching.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Strong arguments are</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
+ teaching and learning.</li>
+
+ <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
+ home, and at their working place without running into license or
+ conversion problems.</li>
+
+ <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
+ than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
+ customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
+ science, not products.</li>
+
+ <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
+ would you need proprietary software for?</li>
+
+</ul>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most
-know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
-people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
-trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
-forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue. I am sure it
-is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
-private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
-too. The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous. To have
-some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
-TED talk
-"<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
-decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
-little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
-I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
-through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
-aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
-download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
-vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
-historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
-to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
-own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
-presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
-drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
-
-<p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
-would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
-and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
-
-</blockquote>
-
-<p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
-radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
-both the government and others use of drones. For such control to be
-effective, everyone must be able to do it. What should such beacon
-contain? At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
-location. Probably also the origin and target position of the current
-flight. And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
-the drone in a central database tracking their movement. Robots
-should not have privacy. It is people who need privacy.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
-plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
-Oslo</a>. The workshop to help people get started will take place
-Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
-people joining forces to make this happen. We have
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
-locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
-a connected mesh spread across Oslo. If this sound interesting to
-you, please join us at the workshop. If you are too impatient to wait
-15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
-<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
-right away. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
-use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
-bought arrived on Friday. Here are my notes on how to set up the
-MR3040 as a mesh node using
-<a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
-<a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
-and downloaded
-<a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
-recommended firmware image</a>
-(openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
-uploaded it into the original web interface. The flashing went fine,
-and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port. After
-logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
-could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
-
-<p>I started off by reading the instructions from
-<a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
-Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
-eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
-<a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
-batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>. A small snag was the fact that the
-<tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
-should. The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
-dependency crc16 was not already loaded. I
-<a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
-the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon. But the problem
-only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
-seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
-
-<p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/. I did not bridge
-the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
-box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
-The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
-them:</p>
-
-<p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
-
-<pre>
-
-config interface 'loopback'
- option ifname 'lo'
- option proto 'static'
- option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
- option netmask '255.0.0.0'
-
-config globals 'globals'
- option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
-
-config interface 'lan'
- option ifname 'eth0'
- option type 'bridge'
- option proto 'dhcp'
- option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
- option netmask '255.255.255.0'
- option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
- option ip6assign '60'
-
-config interface 'mesh'
- option ifname 'adhoc0'
- option mtu '1528'
- option proto 'batadv'
- option mesh 'bat0'
-</pre>
-
-<p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
-<pre>
-
-config wifi-device 'radio0'
- option type 'mac80211'
- option channel '11'
- option hwmode '11ng'
- option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
- option htmode 'HT20'
- list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
- list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
- list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
- list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
- option disabled '0'
-
-config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
- option device 'radio0'
- option ifname 'adhoc0'
- option network 'mesh'
- option encryption 'none'
- option mode 'adhoc'
- option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
- option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
-</pre>
-<p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
-<pre>
-
-config 'mesh' 'bat0'
- option interfaces 'adhoc0'
- option 'aggregated_ogms'
- option 'ap_isolation'
- option 'bonding'
- option 'fragmentation'
- option 'gw_bandwidth'
- option 'gw_mode'
- option 'gw_sel_class'
- option 'log_level'
- option 'orig_interval'
- option 'vis_mode'
- option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
- option 'distributed_arp_table'
- option 'network_coding'
- option 'hop_penalty'
-
-# yet another batX instance
-# config 'mesh' 'bat5'
-# option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
-</pre>
-
-<p>The mesh node is now operational. I have yet to test its range,
-but I hope it is good. I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
-still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <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>
-</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>
-</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>
-
-<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>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
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