</description>
</item>
+ <item>
+ <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<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>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Magnetstripeinnhold i billetter fra Flytoget og Hurtigruten</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 21 May 2010 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>For en stund tilbake kjøpte jeg en magnetkortleser for å kunne
+titte på hva som er skrevet inn på magnetstripene til ulike kort. Har
+ikke hatt tid til å analysere mange kort så langt, men tenkte jeg
+skulle dele innholdet på to kort med mine lesere.</p>
+
+<p>For noen dager siden tok jeg flyet til Harstad og Hurtigruten til
+Bergen. Flytoget fra Oslo S til flyplassen ga meg en billett med
+magnetstripe. Påtrykket finner jeg følgende informasjon:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Flytoget Airport Express Train
+
+Fra - Til : Oslo Sentralstasjon
+Kategori : Voksen
+Pris : Nok 170,00
+Herav mva. 8,00% : NOK 12,59
+Betaling : Kontant
+Til - Fra : Oslo Lufthavn
+Utstedt: : 08.05.10
+Gyldig Fra-Til : 08.05.10-07.11.10
+Billetttype : Enkeltbillett
+
+102-1015-100508-48382-01-08
+</pre>
+
+<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
+<tt>;E?+900120011=23250996541068112619257138248441708433322932704083389389062603279671261502492655?</tt>.
+Aner ikke hva innholdet representerer, og det er lite overlapp mellom
+det jeg ser trykket på billetten og det jeg ser av tegn i
+magnetstripen. Håper det betyr at de bruker kryptografiske metoder
+for å gjøre det vanskelig å forfalske billetter.</p>
+
+<p>Den andre billetten er fra Hurtigruten, der jeg mistenker at
+strekkoden på fronten er mer brukt enn magnetstripen (det var i hvert
+fall den biten vi stakk inn i dørlåsen).</p>
+
+<p>Påtrykket forsiden er følgende:</p>
+
+<pre>
+Romnummer 727
+Hurtigruten
+Midnatsol
+Reinholdtsen
+Petter
+Bookingno: SAX69 0742193
+Harstad-Bergen
+Dep: 09.05.2010 Arr: 12.05.2010
+Lugar fra Risøyhamn
+Kost: FRO=4
+</pre>
+
+<p>På selve magnetstripen er innholdet
+<tt>;1316010007421930=00000000000000000000?+E?</tt>. Heller ikke her
+ser jeg mye korrespondanse mellom påtrykk og magnetstripe.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
+found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
+working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
+definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
+
+<p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
+include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
+get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
+firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
+install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
+are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
+an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
+enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
+debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
+Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
+to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
+/cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
+found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
+going to work.</p>
+
+<p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
+look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
+the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
+packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
+"external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
+/cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
+solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
+look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
+provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
+to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
+Edu.</p>
+
+<p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
+activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
+hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
+run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
+license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
+solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
+contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
+The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
+issues are known and should be solved:
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>The wicd package seen to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
+parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
+seem to be on the case.</li>
+
+<li>The nvidia X driver seem to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
+triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
+maintainer is on the case.</li>
+
+<li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
+sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
+sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
+/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
+sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
+workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
+sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
+solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
+some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
+which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</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>
+
+<p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
</channel>
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