- <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>
-</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
-%
-</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>
-</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>
-</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>
-</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>
-</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>