- <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Around three years ago, I created
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
-system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
-hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
-present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
-relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
-lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
-tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
-it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
-install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
-system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
-words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
-with.</p>
-
-<p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
-adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
-time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
-I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
-the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
-was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
-<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
-appstream system</a> was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
-add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
-appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
-Debian version of appstream.</p>
-
-<p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
-and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
-appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
-package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
-pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
-how do add the required
-<a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
-in pymissile</a>. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
-this content:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
-&lt;component&gt;
- &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
- &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
- &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
- &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
- &lt;description&gt;
- &lt;p&gt;
- Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
- Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
- motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
- launcher.
- &lt;/p&gt;
- &lt;/description&gt;
- &lt;provides&gt;
- &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
- &lt;/provides&gt;
-&lt;/component&gt;
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
-which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
-(modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
-will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
-0202.</p>
-
-<p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
-are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
-appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
-these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
-it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
-(in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
-it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
-upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
-
-<p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
-mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
-appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
-package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
-line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
-all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
-pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
-installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
-question.</p>
-
-<p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
-
-<p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
-try running this command on the command line:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
-blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
+ <title>I.F. Stone - an inspiration for us all</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2016 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
+Schwarz on The Intercept
+<a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/new-documentary-legacy-f-stone/">about
+his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
+USA</a>. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
+(<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974841">part one is 12 minutes</a> and
+<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974842">part two is 30 minutes</a>), and
+I found both truly fascinating. It is amazing what he was able to
+find by digging up public sources and government papers. He
+documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
+<a href="http://www.ifstone.org/weekly.php">his weekly news letters</a>
+inspiring to read even today.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
+<br>- I. F. Stone
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
+and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
+much as possible. I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
+to follow the principles of I. F. Stone. They are definitely in short
+supply. If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
+check him out.</p>