I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
-this
-announcement today:
-
-
-the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
-*beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
-time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
-release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
-
-(As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
-released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
-later today ;)
-
-We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
-weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
-from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
-be possible and encouraged!
-
-Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
-bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
-
-Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
-operating system for schools, universities and other
-organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
-administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
-will work in harmony on the school network. With Debian Edu, the
-teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
-complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
-days.
-
-Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
-world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
-with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
-archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
-
-For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
-installation instructions are available, including detailed
-instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
-up a network or adding users. Please note that the password for the
-user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
-least 5 characters!
-
-== Where to download ==
-
-A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
-can be downloaded at the following locations:
-
- http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
- rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
-
-The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
-
-Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
-available, with more software included (saving additional download
-time):
-
- http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
- rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
-
-The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
-
-Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
-http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
-options.
-
-== Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
-
-Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
-the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
-
-This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
-Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
-for Spanish. See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
-online version of the translated manual.
-
-More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
-release notes and the installation manual:
-- http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
-- http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
-
-
-== Errata / known problems ==
-
- It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
- DHCP (#780461).
-
- The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
+
+ 9th August 2017
+ On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
+web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
+how
+to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones using the cheap
+DVB-T software defined radios. The article refered to instructions
+and a recipe by
+Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher, and I decided to test them out.
+
+
The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
+bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
+and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
+scratch. I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
+Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
+stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
+some other version skew problem. While trying to get this recipe
+working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
+and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
+gr-gsm package. I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
+gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
+Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository. All I needed to
+do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.
+
+
The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
+loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
+packages with IMSI numbers in them. The code is fairly short and easy
+to understand. The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
+to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
+and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
+network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
+default). This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
+collector for a few days now.
+
+
The updated and simpler recipe is thus to
-Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
-hostname immediately.
-
-Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
-more current and complete list.
-
-== Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
-
-=== Software updates ===
-
-Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
-
- * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
- i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
- Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
-
- * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
- Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
- * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
- * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
- the others see the manual.
- * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
- * LibreOffice 4.3.3
- * GOsa 2.7.4
- * LTSP 5.5.4
- * CUPS print system 1.7.5
- * new boot framework: systemd
- * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
- * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
- * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
- * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
- * golearn 0.9
- * tuxpaint 0.9.22
- * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
- * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
- * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
- notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
-
-=== Installation changes ===
-
- Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
- for the hardware present.
-
-=== Fixed bugs ===
-
-A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
-from a user perspective:
-
- * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
- DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
- information is corrected (710362)
-
- * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
-
-=== Sugar desktop removed ===
-
-As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
-available in Debian Edu jessie.
+
+- start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,
-== About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
+- build and install the gr-gsm package available from
+http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/,
-Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
-Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
-configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
-running all services needed for a school network is set up just
-waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
-Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
-initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
-machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
-provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
-centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
-services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
-packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
-can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
-environment.
+- clone the git repostory from https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher,
-== About Debian ==
+- run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
+where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
+found a GSM station).
-The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
-free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
-the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
-volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
-maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
-huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
-operating system.
+- go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.
-== Thanks ==
+
-Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
-You rock.
-
+
To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
+running, I decided to package
+the gr-gsm project
+for Debian (WNPP
+#871055), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
+Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
+know much about gnuradio stuff yet.
+
+
I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
+commercial tools like
+The
+Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher or the
+Harris
+Stingray, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
+more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
+is easily tracked. Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
+I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
+wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
+track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
+police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
+of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
+of government officials...
+
+
It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
+script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
+the GSM network. It will only collect one frequency at the time,
+while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
+phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
+program. Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
+simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
+parser code. I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
+one frequency?
@@ -278,193 +117,37 @@ You rock.
-
-
15th April 2015
-
It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
-computer system for schools I've involved in,
-Debian Edu / Skolelinux, was
-being used in India. But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
-interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
-Agarwal.
-
-
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
-
My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
-historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
-My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
-installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
-fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
-few software start-ups as well.
-
-
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?
-
-
It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
-years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
-anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
-educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
-nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
-it was known then. Since then I have started using the various
-education meta-packages provided by the project.
-
-
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?
-
-
It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
-software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
-figuratively). Even if I take the simplest software which is
-gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
-the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
-pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
-#781841 and
-#781842.
-
-
I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
-as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
-possibility of a larger life span. Of course with both it's more a
-question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
-for the developer per-se.
-
-
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?
-
-
I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
-think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
-help from people and the larger community wherever possible.
-
-
I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
-that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
-However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
-pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
-but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
-Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
-still) I have had for a long time :
-
-
1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
-each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
-far would each travel and similar questions like these.
-
-
The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
-be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
-interactive manner. While sites such as the
-Ask
-Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem (as an example or point of
-inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done. I dunno
-if there is a free software which does something like this. The idea
-being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
-this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
-colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
-or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
-This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
-the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
-psychics and everything in-between.
-
-
One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
-one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
-meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
-also be used.
-
-
2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
-enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary. I don't think it
-should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
-sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
-from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
-the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
-the user's input.
-
-
3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
-palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
-needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
-copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
-nature, history etc. and let it loose. This could turn to be really
-huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
-commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
-stock photos. Potential is immense.
-
-
Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
-both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
-lot. This is more so in educational software as these applications
-need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
-immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
-maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
-of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
-maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.
-
-
Which free software do you use daily?
-
-
That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
-aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
-quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
-between kpat and Aiselriot. In desktops it's a tie between
-gnome-flashback and mate.
-
-
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?
-
-
I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
-whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
-Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
-school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
-people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
-various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.
-
-
What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
-passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
-then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
-well.
-
-
I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
-instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
-there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
-Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.
-
-
One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
-and upgrades. People have this myth that each update and upgrade
-means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
-innumerable times. That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
-like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
-it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
-changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
-the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
-releases.
-
-
The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
-is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
-is aimed at.
-
-
Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
-around 2 years, and
-gathered
-some experience there. Some of the things we learnt/discovered
-there was :
-
-
-
- - Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
- and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
- portion/syllabus given.
-
- - They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
- is in the syllabus.
-
- - There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
- times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
- you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
- say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
- as recognizable as say a
- Puneri
- Pagdi so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
- possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
- which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
- parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
- something but that is something for upstream to do.
-
-
+
+
25th July 2017
+

+
+
I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
+"The Debian Administrator's
+Handbook". This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
+I am very happy to hold the result in my hand. We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
+is available
+from lulu.com. If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
+price. The book is also available for download in electronic form as
+PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
+read online
+as a web page.
+
+
This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
+"Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig
+in
+English,
+French
+and
+Norwegian
+Bokmål), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
+project. I hope
+"HÃ¥ndbok
+for Debian-administratoren" will be well received.
@@ -472,33 +155,50 @@ there was :
-
-
7th April 2015
-
I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the Open Source Developers'
-Conference Nordic 2015!
-
-
It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
-where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
-a talk proposal for
-it (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted). As
-part of my involvement with the
-Norwegian Unix User Group member
-association I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
-conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
-Hackathon with our friends
-over at mySociety and
-Holder de ord. This part is
-named the 'My Society' track in the program. There is still space for
-more talks and participants. I hope to see you there.
-
-
Check out the talks
-submitted and accepted so far.
+
+
27th June 2017
+
Jeg kom over teksten
+«Killing
+car privacy by federal mandate» av Leonid Reyzin på Freedom to
+Tinker i dag, og det gleder meg å se en god gjennomgang om hvorfor det
+er et urimelig inngrep i privatsfæren å la alle biler kringkaste sin
+posisjon og bevegelse via radio. Det omtalte forslaget basert på
+Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) kalles Basic Safety Message
+(BSM) i USA og Cooperative Awareness Message (CAM) i Europa, og det
+norske Vegvesenet er en av de som ser ut til å kunne tenke seg å
+pålegge alle biler å fjerne nok en bit av innbyggernes privatsfære.
+Anbefaler alle å lese det som står der.
+
+
Mens jeg tittet litt på DSRC på biler i Norge kom jeg over et sitat
+jeg synes er illustrativt for hvordan det offentlige Norge håndterer
+problemstillinger rundt innbyggernes privatsfære i SINTEF-rapporten
+«Informasjonssikkerhet
+i AutoPASS-brikker» av Trond Foss:
+
+
+«Rapporten ser ikke på informasjonssikkerhet knyttet til personlig
+ integritet.»
+
+
+
Så enkelt kan det tydeligvis gjøres når en vurderer
+informasjonssikkerheten. Det holder vel at folkene på toppen kan si
+at «Personvernet er ivaretatt», som jo er den populære intetsigende
+frasen som gjør at mange tror enkeltindividers integritet tas vare på.
+Sitatet fikk meg til å undres på hvor ofte samme tilnærming, å bare se
+bort fra behovet for personlig itegritet, blir valgt når en velger å
+legge til rette for nok et inngrep i privatsfæren til personer i
+Norge. Det er jo sjelden det får reaksjoner. Historien om
+reaksjonene pÃ¥ Helse Sør-Ãsts tjenesteutsetting er jo sørgelig nok et
+unntak og toppen av isfjellet, desverre. Tror jeg fortsatt takker nei
+til både AutoPASS og holder meg så langt unna det norske helsevesenet
+som jeg kan, inntil de har demonstrert og dokumentert at de verdsetter
+individets privatsfære og personlige integritet høyere enn kortsiktig
+gevist og samfunnsnytte.
@@ -506,25 +206,61 @@ submitted and accepted so far.
-
-
4th April 2015
-
During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
-docbook version of the 2004 book
-Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.
-At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
-inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
-I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
-check the text up to chapter 13. The current status is available on the
-github
-project pages. You can also check out the
-PDF,
-EPUB
-and HTML version available in the
-archive
-directory.
-
-
Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
-you find any.
+
+
12th June 2017
+
It is pleasing to see that the work we put down in publishing new
+editions of the classic Free
+Culture book by the founder of the Creative Commons movement,
+Lawrence Lessig, is still being appreciated. I had a look at the
+latest sales numbers for the paper edition today. Not too impressive,
+but happy to see some buyers still exist. All the revenue from the
+books is sent to the Creative
+Commons Corporation, and they receive the largest cut if you buy
+directly from Lulu. Most books are sold via Amazon, with Ingram
+second and only a small fraction directly from Lulu. The ebook
+edition is available for free from
+Github.
+
+
+
+
A bit sad to see the low sales number on the Norwegian edition, and
+a bit surprising the English edition still selling so well.
+
+
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.