X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/31e78b216f079bfa709d1aa5fa4a5d91da9f46bd..e2c7595dc3590410d743a2d723a81a3b1ea262e2:/blog/index.html diff --git a/blog/index.html b/blog/index.html index 317085e027..a7a884060e 100644 --- a/blog/index.html +++ b/blog/index.html @@ -20,60 +20,58 @@
-
Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian
-
23rd March 2016
-

Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an -extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for -later processing and graphing. The original collector store the -battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new -collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design -full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it -possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise -the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.

- -

The new tools are available in /usr/share/battery-stats/ -in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph -and lifetime prediction by running: - -

-/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
-

- -

Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.

- -

The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu -entry yet):

- -

-/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
-

- -

I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least -when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a -few years of data.

- -

A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats -collector broke in Debian. The scripts in -/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/ were no longer executed. I -suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not -know. The issue is reported as bug #818649 against pm-utils. I -managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call the collector -script every time the power connector is connected and disconnected. -With this fix in place it was finally time to make a new release of -the package, and get it into Debian.

- -

If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please -check out the -battery-stats -in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on -Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from -github. -As always, patches are very welcome.

+ +
5th August 2016
+

As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published +a French and Norwegian translation of the classic +Free Culture book by the +founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig. A bit less +known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations, +using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original. And +because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it +too. The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons +Corporation. In other words, I do not earn any money from this +project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available +for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative +Commons is needed.

+ +

Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at +Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping. Much to +my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the +French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been +available in English since it was first published. In total, 24 paper +books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:

+ + + + + + +
Title / languageQuantity
Culture Libre / French3
Fri kultur / Norwegian7
Free Culture / English14
+ +

The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book +stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble. Most revenue, around $10 per +book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold +directly by Lulu.com. The other channels give less revenue. The +summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10 +via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu. And Lulu.com tells +me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42. No idea +what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a +good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not. But it make me +happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it +as much as I did.

+ +

The ebook edition is available for free from +Github.

+ +

If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native +language, I would be happy to help make it happen. Please get in +touch.

- Tags: debian, english. + Tags: docbook, english, freeculture.
@@ -81,109 +79,40 @@ As always, patches are very welcome.

- -
19th March 2016
-

Back in 2013 I proposed -a -way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by -adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice. I -suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format -for name and address, but any format would work. I did not do -anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make -something like it. It would make it possible to efficiently send -machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.

- -

This was the background when I came across a proposal and -specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier -Visma in Sweden called -UsingQR. Their PDF invoices contain -a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format. -This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR -specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to -get a more bogus entry). I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier -to read. Normally this is all on one long line:

- -

-{
- "vh":500.00,
- "vm":0,
- "vl":0,
- "uqr":1,
- "tp":1,
- "nme":"Din Leverandør",
- "cc":"NO",
- "cid":"997912345 MVA",
- "iref":"12300001",
- "idt":"20151022",
- "ddt":"20151105",
- "due":2500.0000,
- "cur":"NOK",
- "pt":"BBAN",
- "acc":"17202612345",
- "bc":"BIENNOK1",
- "adr":"0313 OSLO"
-}
-

- -

The interpretation of the fields can be found in the -format -specification (revision 2 from june 2014). The format seem to -have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment -of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in -Norway.

- -

Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about -the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the -specification. Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in -November to clarify. Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at) -visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark -protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based -usage limitations for the format. I urged her to make sure this was -explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but -unfortunately this has not happened yet. So I guess if there is -submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright -infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at -risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that -the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so. At least -with patents, there is always -a -chance of getting sued...

- -

I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an -independent standard organization to give others more confidence that -they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms -with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this. Their plan was -to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and -evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular. I hope -they conclude that using an open standard organisation like -IETF is the correct place to -maintain such specification.

- -

Update 2016-03-20: Via Twitter I became aware of -some comments -about this blog post that had several useful links and references to -similar systems. In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association -standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment -information. More information is available from the Wikipedia page on -Short -Payment Descriptor. And in Germany, there is a system named -BezahlCode, -(specification -v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF), which uses QR codes with -URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to -provide the payment information. There is also the -ZUGFeRD -file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am -not sure if it is done already. Last, in Bolivia there are reports -that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR -format on invoices. I have not been able to track down a -specification for this format, because of my limited language skill -sets.

+ +
1st August 2016
+

For mange år siden leste jeg en klassisk tekst som gjorde såpass +inntrykk på meg at jeg husker den fortsatt, flere år senere, og bruker +argumentene fra den stadig vekk. Teksten var «The Relativity of +Wrong» som Isaac Asimov publiserte i Skeptical Inquirer i 1989. Den +gir litt perspektiv rundt formidlingen av vitenskapelige resultater. +Jeg har hatt lyst til å kunne dele den også med folk som ikke +behersker engelsk så godt, som barn og noen av mine eldre slektninger, +og har savnet å ha den tilgjengelig på norsk. For to uker siden tok +jeg meg sammen og kontaktet Asbjørn Dyrendal i foreningen Skepsis om +de var interessert i å publisere en norsk utgave på bloggen sin, og da +han var positiv tok jeg kontakt med Skeptical Inquirer og spurte om +det var greit for dem. I løpet av noen dager fikk vi tilbakemelding +fra Barry Karr hos The Skeptical Inquirer som hadde sjekket og fått OK +fra Robyn Asimov som representerte arvingene i Asmiov-familien og gikk +igang med oversettingen.

+ +

Resultatet, «Relativt +feil», ble publisert på skepsis-bloggen for noen minutter siden. +Jeg anbefaler deg på det varmeste å lese denne teksten og dele den med +dine venner.

+ +

For å håndtere oversettelsen og sikre at original og oversettelse +var i sync brukte vi git, po4a, GNU make og Transifex. Det hele +fungerte utmerket og gjorde det enkelt å dele tekstene og jobbe sammen +om finpuss på formuleringene. Hadde hosted.weblate.org latt meg +opprette nye prosjekter selv i stedet for å måtte kontakte +administratoren der, så hadde jeg brukt weblate i stedet.

- Tags: english, standard. + Tags: norsk, skepsis.
@@ -191,57 +120,51 @@ sets.

- -
15th March 2016
-

Back in September, I blogged about -the -system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery, and -how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I -created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing, -but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already -a battery-stats -package in Debian that should do the same thing, and I did not see -a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be -fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and -hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.

- -

I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own -hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of -battery stats (available from github) and part of the team maintaining -battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally -able to collect battery status using the /sys/class/power_supply/ -information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the -battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a -graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the -status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in -Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not -tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:

- -

- -

My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the -battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details -about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream -battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work -yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a -bit more before I make a new release.

- -

I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I -suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it -impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing -and graphing.

- -

If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop -battery, check out the battery-stats package in -Debian and -on -github. -I would love some help to improve the system further.

+ +
1st August 2016
+

Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf +16 across an entire country? Or that there is a TV channel +broadcasting talks by or about +Linus Torvalds, +Tor, +OpenID, +Common Lisp, +Civic Tech, +EFF founder John Barlow, +how to make 3D +printer electronics and many more fascinating topics? It works +using only free software (all of it +available from Github), and +is administrated using a web browser and a web API.

+ +

The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel +Frikanalen, and I am involved +via the NUUG member association in +running and developing the software for the channel. The channel is +organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and +broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national +broadcasting television). Individuals can broadcast too. The time +slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis. Because the +channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can +experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make +mistakes. And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on +the schedule are free. I see this as an opportunity to spread +knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run +regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with +technology related video. The end result is a channel I like to +describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and +presentations.

+ +

It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV +network (RiksTV). It is also available as a multicast stream on +Uninett. And finally, it is available as +a WebM unicast stream from +Frikanalen and NUUG. Check it out. :)

- Tags: debian, english. + Tags: english, frikanalen, nuug, video.
@@ -249,105 +172,90 @@ I would love some help to improve the system further.

- -
19th February 2016
-

Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to -details. And one of the details is the content of the -debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by -the code in the package in question, preferably in -machine -readable DEP5 format.

- -

For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write -and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the -package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right -the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save -both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure -out what was wrong with -the -zfsonlinux copyright file, I decided to spend some time on -figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least -semi-automatically.

- -

Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the -file based on the code in the source package, -debmake -and cme. I'm -not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to -create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can -be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be -polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake -option in -a -blog posts from 2014. - -

To generate using debmake, use the -cc option: +

+
7th July 2016
+

Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved +to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it +again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up +an +hardened Android installation from the Tor project blog on a +device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken +microphone The initial idea had been to just +install +CyanogenMod on it, but did not quite find time to start on it +until a few days ago.

+ +

The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot +loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select +'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux +machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot +oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using +the HTC developer web +site and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.

+ +

Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029 +or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This +apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and +running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft +require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to +come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap +on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without +him.

+ +

First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from +the +windows binary for HTC Desire HD downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC. +For this there is is a github +project named unruu using libunshield. The unshield tool did not +recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip, +containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which +devices it would work for.

+ +

Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I +followed some instructions +available +from HTC1Guru.com, and ran these commands as root on a Linux +machine with Debian testing:

-debmake -cc > debian/copyright
+adb reboot-bootloader
+fastboot oem rebootRUU
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot reboot
 

-

Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so -this might not be the best option.

+

The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect, +as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing. +The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the +device on while holding volume down and the power button should work +too.

-

The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found -this approach in -a -blog post from 2015. To generate using cme, use the 'update -dpkg-copyright' option: +

With the new hboot version in place I could start following the +instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token +like this:

-cme update dpkg-copyright
-

+fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //' + -

This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to -handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.

- -

When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to -check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options, -debmake -k and license-reconcile. The former seem -to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect -ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing -copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license -names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and -fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know -if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a -copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.

- -

The devscripts tool licensecheck deserve mentioning. It -will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements. -It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but -can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.

- -

Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update -debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on -planet.debian.org.

- -

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my -activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address -15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

- -

Update 2016-02-20: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel -on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file +

And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like +this:

-licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
-  /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
+fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
 

-

He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the -version control system to make it easier to discover license and -copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same -with my packages in the future.

- -

Update 2016-02-21: The cme author recommended -against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed -command line.

+

And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I +could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device. +So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone +before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should +install Debian on it. :)

@@ -355,81 +263,112 @@ command line.

- -
4th February 2016
-

The appstream system -is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very -convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given -firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can -be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog -about. :)

- -

Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware -file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly -picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian -unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested -by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package -providing the example file, do like this:

- -
-% apt install appstream
-[...]
-% apt update
-[...]
-% appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
-  awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
-firmware-qlogic
-%
-
- -

See the -appstream wiki page to learn how to embed the package metadata in -a way appstream can use.

- -

This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a -given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not -know how to handle. First find the mime type using file ---mime-type, and next look up the package providing support for -it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml, -and you can find all packages handling this type like this:

- -
-% apt install appstream
-[...]
-% apt update
-[...]
-% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
-  awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
-bkchem
-phototonic
-inkscape
-shutter
-tetzle
-geeqie
-xia
-pinta
-gthumb
-karbon
-comix
-mirage
-viewnior
-postr
-ristretto
-kolourpaint4
-eog
-eom
-gimagereader
-midori
-%
-
- -

I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for -packages providing appstream metadata.

+ +
3rd July 2016
+

For a while now, I have wanted to test +the Signal app, as it is +said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my +friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a +mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to +have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my +machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the +Github source, compared it to the source in +the +Signal Chrome app available from the Chrome web store, applied +patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and +asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form. Here is +the recipe how I did it.

+ +

First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using + +

+git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
+
+ +

Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be +able to talk to other Signal users:

+ +
+cat <<EOF | patch -p0
+diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
+--- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
+         });
+     });
+ 
+-    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
+-    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
++    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
++    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
+     var messageReceiver;
+     window.getSocketStatus = function() {
+         if (messageReceiver) {
+diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
+--- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
+ ;(function() {
+     'use strict';
+-    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
++    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
+ 
+     window.extension = window.extension || {};
+ 
+EOF
+
+ +

The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating +an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly. +It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js). +The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.

+ +

Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a +script to launch Signal in Chromium.

+ +
+#!/bin/sh
+cd $(dirname $0)
+mkdir -p userdata
+exec chromium \
+  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
+  --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
+
+ +

The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor +SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today +Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines +will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal +connections if they use source IP address.

+ +

When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under +"Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git +repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the +Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote +'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the +registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and +pressed 'Call'. 5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice +repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number +into the verification code field in the form, I could start using +Signal from my laptop. + +

As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to +whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server, +but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server +setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the +content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data +exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know. +So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is +connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server +to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only +those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options +avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not +using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.

@@ -437,91 +376,46 @@ packages providing appstream metadata.

- -
24th January 2016
-

Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around -with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their -position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long -time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their -computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called -mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often -also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access -during installation). And when these programs send out information to -central collection points, the location is often included, unless -extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided -information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is -good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that -the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and -perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way, -when they share their whereabouts with private and public -entities.

- -

- -

The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out -when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is -unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government -officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from -unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the -public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software -tool to do so is called -Creepy or Cree.py. I -discovered it when I read -an -article about Creepy in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i -November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian. -The python program was in Debian, but -the version in -Debian was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I -uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not -have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to -get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in -Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches -are now included -upstream.

- -

The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from -Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a -complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a -given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all -these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at -least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these -days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to -configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide -information to them about your search interests. This should be taken -into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information -about yourself with the services.

- -

The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least -geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital -of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at -information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the -information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area. -I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in -twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a -Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time, -making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other -things. A similar technique have been -used -to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and it is both a powerful -tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people -understand the value of the private information they provide to the -public.

- -

The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as -it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at -least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and -python-requests-toolbelt).

- -

(I have uploaded -the image to -screenshots.debian.net and licensed it under the same terms as the -Creepy program in Debian.)

+ +
6th June 2016
+

When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out +which +multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats / +MIME types, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types +the various players claimed support for. The range was from 55 to 130 +MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all +players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in +their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types +listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.

+ +

Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of +the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files, +and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my +favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable +yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the +Multimedia +player MIME type support status Debian wiki page.

+ +

The new "best" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by +totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and +kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support +several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc, +toten and parole.

+ +

A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as +supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their +desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl, +audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg, +video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska, +video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find +it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media +players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both +formats.

@@ -529,72 +423,118 @@ Creepy program in Debian.)

- -
15th January 2016
-

During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum -observed -that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to -believe a computer have a given security hole if it download a -security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always -use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those -listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard -Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible -to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that -download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and -proposed -to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror. He -was not the first to propose this, as the -apt-transport-tor -package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt -to use Tor, but I was not -aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.

- -

Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian -sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central -Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making -it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes, -making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.

- -

Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by -installing apt-transport-tor and replacing http and https -urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead -of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing -etckeeper before you start to have a history of the changes -done in /etc/.

- -
-apt install apt-transport-tor
-sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
-sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
-
- -

If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run -the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are -using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just -edit the file manually) to match your mirror.

- -

This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like -apt-file only recently started using the apt transport -system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For -apt-file you need the version currently in experimental, -which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you -need a working apt-file, this is not for you.

- -

Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start -using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you -update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus -masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will -become normal for the machine in question.

- -

On Freedombox, APT -is set up by default to use apt-transport-tor when Tor is -enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian -system.

+ +
5th June 2016
+

Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I +decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a +talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I +wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed +the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to +the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I +started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover +that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and +started making the slides again from memory, to have something to +present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be +loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the +slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer +be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides +three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and +shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem – +kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand. +Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great +program to make slides. The point I'm trying to make is that we +expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is +embarrassing to its developers if it can't.

+ +

Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data +files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A +while back I discovered that the screencast recorder +gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file +browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand +such file. I tracked down the cause being file --mime-type +returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had +installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for +file to change its +behavour and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked +several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give +the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a +while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the +output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.

+ +

But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music +system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file +browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files +(*.rg). I've reported the +rosegarden problem to BTS and a fix is commited to git and will be +included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering +how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files +from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.

+ +

The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types. +There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from +file --mime-type mentioned above, and the content of the +shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME +type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this +information is collected from +the +desktop files available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is +one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is +activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one +can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and +selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar. In general +this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME +type (preferably +a +MIME type registered with IANA), file and/or the shared MIME +registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME +type in its list of supported MIME types.

+ +

The /usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml entry for +the +Shared MIME database look like this:

+ +

+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
+  <mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden">
+    <sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/>
+    <comment>Rosegarden project file</comment>
+    <glob pattern="*.rg"/>
+  </mime-type>
+</mime-info>
+

+ +

This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip +(it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an +official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own +unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.

+ +

The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list +audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the +file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:

+ +

+% grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
+MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
+X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
+%
+

+ +

The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the +MimeType= line.

+ +

If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when +selected from the file browser, please check out the output from +file --mime-type for the file, ensure the file ending and +MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check +that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming +support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it +fixed. :)

- Tags: debian, english, sikkerhet. + Tags: debian, english.
@@ -602,37 +542,36 @@ system.

- -
2nd January 2016
-

Det kommer stadig nye løsninger for å ta lagre unna innslag fra NRK -for å se på det senere. For en stund tilbake kom jeg over et script -nrkopptak laget av Ingvar Hagelund. Han fjernet riktignok sitt script -etter forespørsel fra Erik Bolstad i NRK, men noen tok heldigvis og -gjorde det tilgjengelig -via github.

- -

Scriptet kan lagre som MPEG4 eller Matroska, og bake inn -undertekster i fila på et vis som blant annet VLC forstår. For å -bruke scriptet, kopier ned git-arkivet og kjør

- -

-nrkopptak/bin/nrk-opptak k https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1
-

- -

URL-eksemplet er dagens toppsak på tv.nrk.no. Argument 'k' ber -scriptet laste ned og lagre som Matroska. Det finnes en rekke andre -muligheter for valg av kvalitet og format.

- -

Jeg foretrekker dette scriptet fremfor youtube-dl, som - -nevnt i 2014 støtter NRK og en rekke andre videokilder, på grunn -av at nrkopptak samler undertekster og video i en enkelt fil, hvilket -gjør håndtering enklere på disk.

+ +
28th May 2016
+

A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and +the current President of the Tor +project, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the +Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG). A +video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help +from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk +on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG +currently publishes its talks. You can +watch the live stream using a web +browser with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video +on demand page for the talk +"Tor: Anonymous +communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.".

+ +

Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with +HTML video and Ogg Theora support:

+ +

+ +

I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you +want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)

- Tags: multimedia, norsk, video, web. + Tags: english, frikanalen, nuug, video.
@@ -640,58 +579,67 @@ gjør håndtering enklere på disk.

- -
23rd December 2015
-

When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to -call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the -numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids -to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some -exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass -time, as we kids have plenty of it.

- -

A few days I came across -the OpenALPR -project, a free software project to automatically discover and -report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the -"car numbers" in a machine readable format. I've been looking for -such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the -automatic -number plate recognition tool only is available in the hands of -the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to -even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I -discovered the developer -wanted to get the tool into -Debian, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to -help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian -archive.

- -

Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded -it into Debian, where it currently -waits -in the NEW queue for review by the Debian ftpmasters.

- -

I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful -for the common folks, ie those not running a large government -surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike -and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified -when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case -was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home -to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his -car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone -capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to -open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I -guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use -cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.

- -

If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check -out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/ -before running "debuild" to build the source. Or wait a bit until the -package show up in unstable.

+ +
25th May 2016
+

The isenkram +system is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware +related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between +hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to +install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases +are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software +needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it +proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader; +and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to +install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few +command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the +hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).

+ +

The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found +good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon +is going away and is generally being replaced by +PackageKit, +so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch +from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the +rewrite finally took place. I've just uploaded a new version of +Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default +for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out, +install the isenkram package and insert some hardware dongle +and see if it is recognised.

+ +

If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for +the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup +program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:

+ +

+% isenkram-lookup 
+bluez
+cheese
+fprintd
+fprintd-demo
+gkrellm-thinkbat
+hdapsd
+libpam-fprintd
+pidgin-blinklight
+thinkfan
+tleds
+tp-smapi-dkms
+tp-smapi-source
+tpb
+%p
+

+ +

The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way +is for packages to announce their hardware support using +the +cross distribution appstream system. +See +previous +blog posts about isenkram to learn how to do that.

@@ -699,114 +647,62 @@ package show up in unstable.

- -
20th December 2015
-

Around three years ago, I created -the isenkram -system 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.

- -

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, -the -appstream system 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.

- -

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 -metadata -in pymissile. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with -this content:

- -
-<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<component>
-  <id>pymissile</id>
-  <metadata_license>MIT</metadata_license>
-  <name>pymissile</name>
-  <summary>Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher</summary>
-  <description>
-    <p>
-      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.
-    </p>
-  </description>
-  <provides>
-    <modalias>usb:v1130p0202d*</modalias>
-  </provides>
-</component>
-
- -

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.

- -

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.

- -

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:

- -
-debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
-
- -

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.

- -

Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the -DEP-11 proposal.

- -

To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine, -try running this command on the command line:

- -
-cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
-
- -

To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out -my -blog posts tagged isenkram.

+ +
23rd May 2016
+

Yesterday I updated the +battery-stats +package in Debian with a few patches sent to me by skilled and +enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes. +First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in +one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was +dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available. +The script worked when called from the command line, but not when +called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY +variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the +graph window pop up as expected.

+ +

The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the +graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of +colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages +of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design +capacity.

+ +

+ +

The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery +statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to +visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red +line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent: + +

+ +

In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80 +percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is +shrinking. :(

+ +

The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle +more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply +information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the +collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now +both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the +machine.

+ +

If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please +check out the +battery-stats +in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on +Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from github. +Patches are very welcome.

+ +

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

- Tags: debian, english, isenkram. + Tags: debian, english.
@@ -830,6 +726,16 @@ blog posts tagged isenkram.

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  • @@ -1109,19 +1015,19 @@ blog posts tagged isenkram.

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  • @@ -1141,19 +1047,19 @@ blog posts tagged isenkram.

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  • @@ -1161,7 +1067,7 @@ blog posts tagged isenkram.

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