- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-19 19:00</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
-Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
-package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
-into unstable. The
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
-package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
-passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
-package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
-hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
-
-<p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
-roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
-nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
-which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
-for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
-#485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
-libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
-care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
-
-<p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
-at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
-problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
-package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
-find time to make sure the next release will include both the
-Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
-and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
-
-<p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
-LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
-when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
-cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
-memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
-libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
-directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
-be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
-with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
-to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
-on the home directory servers.</p>
-
-<p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
-message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
-is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
-message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
-a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
-type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
-please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-14 22:40</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
-Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
-Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
-expected, if I am to believe the
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
-on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
-with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
-remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
-detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
-The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
-version.</p>
-
-More information about
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
-based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
-currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
-problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-CONCURRENCY=none
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
-the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
-list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-14 21:10</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
-system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
-network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
-central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
-also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
-MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
-to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
-
-<p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
-ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
-this on the collector host:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
-line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
-
-<p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
-addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
-machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
-tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
-written yet.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-13 22:20</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>The last few days a new boot system called
-<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
-has been
-<a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
-
-to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
-with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
-<a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
-a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
-based boot system. Tollef is
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
-systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
-like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
-information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
-at the moment do not.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
-platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
-some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
-kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
-system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
-way forward.</p>
-
-<p>In the mean time, based on the
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
-on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
-decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
-soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
-there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
-new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
-already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
-with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-06 23:25</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
-complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
-init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
-to test your Squeeze system, make sure
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
-based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
-/etc/default/rcS:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-CONCURRENCY=makefile
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
-scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
-/etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
-/etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
-to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
-start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
-make this happen.</p>
-
-<p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
-fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
-init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
-dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
-the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
-
-<p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
-manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
-expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
-fix the remaining issues.</p>
-
-<p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
-the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
-list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-05-02 13:47</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
-create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
-change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
-
-<p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
-Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
-and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
-unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
-passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
-
-<p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
-settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-root@tjener:~# chage -l test
-Last password change : May 02, 2010
-Password expires : never
-Password inactive : never
-Account expires : never
-Minimum number of days between password change : 0
-Maximum number of days between password change : 99999
-Number of days of warning before password expires : 7
-root@tjener:~#
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
-account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
-lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
-to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
-simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
-avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
-
-<p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
-intended:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
-root@tjener:~# chage -l test
-Last password change : Jan 02, 1970
-Password expires : never
-Password inactive : never
-Account expires : never
-Minimum number of days between password change : 0
-Maximum number of days between password change : 10950
-Number of days of warning before password expires : 7
-root@tjener:~#
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
-Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
-user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
-sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
-
-<p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
-Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
-shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
-last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
-on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
-I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
-Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there. I have not
-tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
-equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
-username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
-change.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a></div>
- <div class="date">2010-04-28 20:40</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
-Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
-handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
-and go.</p>
-
-<p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
-Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
-example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
-The setup would consist of the following:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
- the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
- the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
- server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
- central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
- request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
- automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
- and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
- hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
- request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
- can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
- the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
-
- <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
- authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
- to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
- to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
- <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
- or the Fedora developed
- <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
- Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
-
- <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
- using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
- directory, using unison.</li>
-
- <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
- their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
- the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
- system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
- implemented.</li>
-
- <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
- sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
-
- <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
- cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
- local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
-the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
-in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
-tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
-(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
-perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
-its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
-when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
-to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
-please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff