X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/993bacdaa45cfe0bc732505c7d95d0ed592daf2a..c7f4475b04a0040356372a6b04e99cc5d54009dd:/blog/index.rss diff --git a/blog/index.rss b/blog/index.rss index 95d7e449a6..48529922d2 100644 --- a/blog/index.rss +++ b/blog/index.rss @@ -6,6 +6,56 @@ http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ + + More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html + Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200 + +<p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally +found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time +working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now, +definitely helped freeing some time.</p> + +<p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We +include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to +get disk and network controllers working. Without having these +firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to +install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group +are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on +an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be +enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get +debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong. +Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages +to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and +/cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I +found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was +going to work.</p> + +<p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer +look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside +the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware +packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other +"external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the +/cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should +solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to +look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware +provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us +to provide the same feature in the PXE installer provided in Debian +Edu.</p> + +<p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not +activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended +hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and +run these before activating the firmware during installation. The +license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should +solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p> + +<p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please +contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p> + + + Magnetstripeinnhold i billetter fra Flytoget og Hurtigruten http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Magnetstripeinnhold_i_billetter_fra_Flytoget_og_Hurtigruten.html @@ -457,50 +507,5 @@ strongly recommend this book.</p> - - Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze? - http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html - http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html - Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:00 +0200 - -<p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays -NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me -about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a -Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in -place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we -have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home -directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do -not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust -users and cryptographic keys instead.</p> - -<p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a -Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the -administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the -school administration will have to maintain access control using flat -files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p> - -<p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and -pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?</p> - -<p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and -Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We -would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such -shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate -to work properly.</p> - -<p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the -skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with -configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be -setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the -rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the -time.</p> - -<p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux, -I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG -presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show -up in a few days.</p> - - -