<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>Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
+on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
+from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
+you have not done so already.</p>
+
+<p>I plan to present the new version at
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
+meeting</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
+in Oslo, Norway.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
+interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
+interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
+more international audience.</p>
+
+<p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
+Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
+Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
+from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
+and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
+work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
+and am happy to share the response with you. :)
+
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
+and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
+Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
+teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
+Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
+I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
+primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
+so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
+also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
+to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
+appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
+server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
+samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
+Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
+did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
+and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
+there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
+problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
+previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
+Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
+downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
+Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
+my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
+workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
+ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
+designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
+doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
+school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
+Japan.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
+have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
+make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
+who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
+important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
+instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
+default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
+kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
+Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
+second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
+customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
+multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
+took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
+I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
+help.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
+studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
+(customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
+still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
+house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
+the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
+have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
+day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
+installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
+have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
+and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
+and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
+popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
+to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
+file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
+also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
+Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
+budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
+compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
+is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
+are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
+doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
+
+<p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
+screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
+Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
+also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
+download as a
+<a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
+Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
+
+<p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
+ <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
+ <p>Download video as
+ <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
+</video></p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Hamar kommune imponerer i FiksGataMi-rapportert problem i dag</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hamar_kommune_imponerer_i_FiksGataMi_rapportert_problem_i_dag.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hamar_kommune_imponerer_i_FiksGataMi_rapportert_problem_i_dag.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 5 Mar 2012 21:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Tok nettopp en titt på listen over løste problemer i
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> (hentet via
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/open311">Open311-søkegrensesnittet</a>),
+og lot meg imponere over Hamar kommunes raske respons. Sjekk
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/report/10791">rapport #10791</a>, der
+Hamar kommune kl. 10:19 i dag får beskjed om at det er dårlig
+brøyting, allerede 10:50 melder kommunen tilbake at de er på saken.
+18:26 samme dag melder så innsender at problemet er løst. Hatten av
+for folkene i Hamar kommune!</p>
+
+<p>Apropos bra respons. En bruker sendte for noen dager inn følgende
+tilbakemelding til oss som står bak tjenesten.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>Rapporterte inn slukte gatelys på Torsnesveien, og to
+uker etterpå er lysene tilbake. Flott service!</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det er veldig hyggelig å høre at FiksGataMi fungerer bra for
+innbyggerne. Måtte alle landets innbyggere få samme gode erfaring med
+FiksGataMi og det offentlige. I dag er det 52 kommuner som har lenke
+til FiksGataMi fra sine nettsider, og dermed indikerer at de liker vår
+tjeneste. Måtte de få følge av resten av landets kommuner snart. :)</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
-wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
-on Squeeze. The full announcement is
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
-on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
-solution for your school.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Skolelinux-intervju: Olav Dahlum</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
-høre fra et nyvalgt medlem i foreningen
-<a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
-Skolen</a>.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg heter Olav Dahlum, og er frilans oversetter, tester,
-prosjektleder og bruker av fri og åpen programvare som
-LibreOffice. Jeg er også et av styremedlemmene i FRISK.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg kom i kontakt med prosjektet i 2009, da jeg ble ansatt i
-stiftelsen Åpne kontorprogram på norsk for å oversette og teste den
-norske utgaven av OpenOffice.org. Arbeidet har hele tiden vært
-koordinert sammen med Skolelinux, og mange av de samme menneskene er
-involvert, så på den måten ble jeg en del av den utvidede
-familien.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Skolelinux handler i likhet med utdanningssektoren om å dele
-kunnskap med andre, og det er dette som er hovedstyrken til
-prosjektet. Selv om Skolelinux hovedsaklig er involvert i utvikling
-av programvare, er det også et sted der man kan utfolde seg uavhengig
-av bakgrunn og ferdigheter.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Liten utbredelse og manglende støtte fra leverandører som leverer
-pedagogisk programvare til skolebruk. Kunne kanskje hatt flere
-verktøy som letter administrasjonen ytterligere, slik at også mindre
-erfarne databrukere kan utføre lett vedlikehold og rutinejobber.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg er nesten forpliktet til å si at jeg bruker LibreOffice... Jeg
-bruker forøvrig frie og åpne operativsystemer basert på
-operativsystemkjernen Linux, for tiden openSUSE 12,1 med KDE4. Men
-hvis jeg skal dra fram noen flere eksempler så er nok Mozilla Firefox
-og Thunderbird to av de jeg bruker mest. I tillegg er jeg en flittig
-bruker av OpenSSH, Irssi, Midnight Commander, Git, Subversion,
-Translation Toolkit og Super Maryo Chronicles (litt gøy skal man ha,
-og med to håndkontroller liggende er det ikke til å unngå).</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
-skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Vi må få leverandører av pedagogisk programvare med på laget, men
-også utvikle vår egen tilpasset det norske markedet. Det er også
-mulig å involvere utdanningssektoren direkte i arbeidet, for eksempel
-gjennom studentprosjekter der elevene selv er med å utforme
-programvare direkte eller indirekte gjennom aktive bidrag. Dette gjør
-ikke bare samarbeidet tettere, men fokuset på standarder og friheten
-til å velge sin egen løsning vil kanskje stimulere interessen for
-framtidig deltakelse i bransjen. Vi som driver med fri og åpen
-programvare ønsker oss ikke rene konsumenter, men tenkende og
-selvstendige individer som kan være med å skape sin egen fremtid.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
-Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
-<a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
-close</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
-funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
-device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
-the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
-disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
-figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
-
-<p>After fumbling a bit, I
-<a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
-that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
-printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
-used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
-do
- printf "Failed disk $d: "
- hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
-done
-</blockquote></pre>
-
-<p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
-next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
-
-<p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
-Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
-Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
-</blockquote></pre>
-
-<p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
-labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
-to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
-remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
-label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
-mounted inside my box.</p>
-
-<p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
-Software RAID in the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
-debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
-make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
-it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
-should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
-disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>New in the Squeeze version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
-ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
-based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
-the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
-allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
-sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
-change the global proxy setting by editing
-<tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
-to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
-
-<p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
-In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
-simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
-{
- if (!isResolvable(host) ||
- isPlainHostName(host) ||
- dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
- return "DIRECT";
- else
- return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
-}
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
-
-<blockquote><pre>
-http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
-ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
-</pre></blockquote>
-
-<p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
-the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
-would be used for
-<tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
-and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
-<tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
-fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
-javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
-able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
-library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
-is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
-use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
-known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
-
-<p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
-laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
-is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
-automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
-feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
-announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
-
-<p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
-or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
-could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
-and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
-distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
-proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
-first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
-ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
-the network setup changes.</p>
-
-<p>The WPAD system is documented in a
-<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
-draft</a> and a
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
-page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
</rss>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff