X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/e3fa21ea975bf039f5984f729e4bb55d04f2854d..14fb4053faf8143a66beec3c20fc517c075b0582:/blog/index.html

diff --git a/blog/index.html b/blog/index.html
index d9f01eb429..814fafb5b5 100644
--- a/blog/index.html
+++ b/blog/index.html
@@ -20,47 +20,79 @@
 
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a></div>
-      <div class="date">22nd January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>Yesterday, I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
-for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
-pluggable hardware devices, which I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
-out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
-up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
-people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
-for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
-renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
-process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
-repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
-To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
-
-<pre>
-git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/isenkram.git
-cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
-</pre>
-
-<p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
-want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
-But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
-changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
-
-<p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
-stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
-stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
-the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
-word.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
-instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
-process.</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a></div>
+      <div class="date"> 5th July 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
+for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
+time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
+will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
+ended up picking a
+<a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
+with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
+a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
+second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
+on that below.</p>
+
+<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
+important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
+listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
+feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
+allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
+requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
+to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
+disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
+get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
+
+<p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
+X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
+significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
+hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
+good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
+I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
+needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
+
+<p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
+visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
+lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
+with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
+I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
+reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
+default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
+reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
+report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
+Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
+kernel developers as
+<a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
+report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
+(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
+Lenovo forums, both for
+<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
+2012-11-10</a> and for
+<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
+03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
+reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
+on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
+problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
+There is even a
+<a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
+available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
+minutes by writing to a file.</p>
+
+<p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
+contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
+requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
+firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
+Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
+hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
+fixed. :)</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -68,84 +100,115 @@ process.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a></div>
-      <div class="date">21st January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>Early this month I set out to try to
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
-the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
-prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
-it, fetch the
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
-from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
-package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
-autostart script.</p>
-
-<p>The design is simple:</p>
-
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a></div>
+      <div class="date"> 3rd July 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
+today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
+
+<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
+2013-07-03</strong></p>
+
+<p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
+
+<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
+Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
+out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
+network. Immediately 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, DVD 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
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
+than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
+the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
+and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
+
+<p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
+this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
+Squeeze release.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
 <ul>
+  <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
+  <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
+    submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
+    brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
+  <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
+    they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
+    menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
+  <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
+    multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
+    X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
+    too.</li>
+  <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
+    are too few to make the package useful.</li>
+</ul>
+<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
+<ul>
+  <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
+  <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
+  <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
+    up for some language options.</li>
+  <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
+  <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
+  <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
+    d-i is doing it.</li>
+  <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
+    debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
+  <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
+    script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
+    Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
+  <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
+    installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
+  <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
+  <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
+    and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
+  <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
+    work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
+</ul>
+<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
+<ul>
+  <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
+    available yet (698840).</li>
+  <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
+</ul>
+<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
 
-<li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
-hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
-
-<li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
-from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
-initially did.</li>
-
-<li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
-the APT database, a database
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
-via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
+<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
+  <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
+  <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
+</ul>
 
-<li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
-isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
-plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
-package or packages.</li>
+<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
+<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
 
-<li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
-aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
+<p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
+  <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
+  <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
+</ul>
 
-<li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
-package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
+<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
+<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
 
-</ul>
+<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
 
-<p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
-are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
-notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
-approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
-
-<p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
-<br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
-<br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
-<br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
-<br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
-
-<p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
-is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
-need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
-storing such information in the package control file, but could be
-changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
-method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
-modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
-as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
-here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
-'<tt>svn checkout
-svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
-hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
-devscripts package.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
-renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
-subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
-instructions</a> for details.</p>
+<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -153,61 +216,70 @@ instructions</a> for details.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a></div>
-      <div class="date">19th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
-suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
-black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
-IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
-Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
-Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
-going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
-X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
-not a durable solution.
-
-<p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
-got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
-  than A4).</li>
-<li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
-<li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
-<li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
-<li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
-<li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
-<li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
-<li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
-<li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
-size).</li>
-<li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
-  X.org packages.</li>
-<li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
-  the time).
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
-list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
-last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
-at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
-robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
-robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
-Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
-still be useful.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
-external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
-<a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
-well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
-of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
-Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a></div>
+      <div class="date">25th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
+perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
+working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
+needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
+affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
+controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
+including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
+process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
+they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
+debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
+info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
+info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
+info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
+info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
+info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+Preconfiguring packages ...
+Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
+(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
+Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
+Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
+# 
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
+printed instead:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
+info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
+# 
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
+me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
+
+<p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
+kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
+the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
+download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
+the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
+requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
+non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
+<tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
+machine.</p>
+
+<p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
+this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
+finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
+#655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
+firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
+from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -215,75 +287,50 @@ Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a></div>
-      <div class="date">18th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
-install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
-<a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
-done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
-Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
-information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
-plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
-
-<pre>
-#!/usr/bin/python
-import sys
-import apt
-def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
-    cache = apt.Cache()
-    cache.open(None)
-    thepkgs = []
-    for pkg in cache:
-        version = pkg.candidate
-        if version is None:
-            version = pkg.installed
-        if version is None:
-            continue
-        record = version.record
-        if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
-            continue
-        mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
-        for t in mime_types:
-            t = t.rstrip().strip()
-            if t == mimetype:
-                thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
-    return thepkgs
-mimetype = "audio/ogg"
-if 1 < len(sys.argv):
-    mimetype = sys.argv[1]
-print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
-for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
-    print "  %s" %pkg
-</pre>
-
-<p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
-
-<pre>
-% ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype 
-Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
-  gecko-mediaplayer
-% ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
-Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
-  browser-plugin-gnash
-%
-</pre>
-
-<p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
-itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
-packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
-anyone working on adding it?</p>
-
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
-request for icweasel support for this feature is
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
-of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
-is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a></div>
+      <div class="date">22nd June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
+which check that services are running, working, and return the
+expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
+test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
+installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
+operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
+online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
+configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
+
+<p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
+Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
+complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
+happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
+suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
+cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
+When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
+using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
+working packages to get it working.  And ad the packages changed name
+from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
+debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
+packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
+would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
+right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
+
+<p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
+administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
+test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
+any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
+the problem.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
+please join us on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
+irc.debian.org</a> and the
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
+list.</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -291,120 +338,143 @@ is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a></div>
-      <div class="date">16th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
-proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
-proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
-the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
-type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
-mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
-automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
-downloaded by the browser.</p>
-
-<p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
-to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
-Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
-can be found on the
-<a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
-site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
-answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
-types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
-The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a></div>
+      <div class="date">17th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
+Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
+globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
+#debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
+worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
+help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
+with him, to learn more about him.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
+which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
+party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
+friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
+country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
+community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
+began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
+constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
+field.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
+provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
+activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
+of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
+software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
+the only one we have in our country.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
+even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
+it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
+educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
+love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
+technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
+ways to contribute.</p>
+
+<p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
+configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
+haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
+areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
+software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
+one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
+environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
+for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
+from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
+have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
+maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
+took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
+Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
+time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
+with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
+out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
+it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
+availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
+scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
+only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
+lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
+project.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
+disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
+project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
+a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
+Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
+ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
+lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
+opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
+to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
+
+<p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
+with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
+to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
+on.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
+daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
+am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
+Enlightenment project a lot!),
+<a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
+use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
+<a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
+get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
+stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
+now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
+that:</p>
 
-<pre>
-  count MIME type
-  ----- -----------------------
-     32 text/plain
-     30 audio/mpeg
-     29 image/png
-     28 image/jpeg
-     27 application/ogg
-     26 audio/x-mp3
-     25 image/tiff
-     25 image/gif
-     22 image/bmp
-     22 audio/x-wav
-     20 audio/x-flac
-     19 audio/x-mpegurl
-     18 video/x-ms-asf
-     18 audio/x-musepack
-     18 audio/x-mpeg
-     18 application/x-ogg
-     17 video/mpeg
-     17 audio/x-scpls
-     17 audio/ogg
-     16 video/x-ms-wmv
-</pre>
+<ul>
 
-<p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
+<li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
 
-<pre>
-  count MIME type
-  ----- -----------------------
-     33 text/plain
-     32 image/png
-     32 image/jpeg
-     29 audio/mpeg
-     27 image/gif
-     26 image/tiff
-     26 application/ogg
-     25 audio/x-mp3
-     22 image/bmp
-     21 audio/x-wav
-     19 audio/x-mpegurl
-     19 audio/x-mpeg
-     18 video/mpeg
-     18 audio/x-scpls
-     18 audio/x-flac
-     18 application/x-ogg
-     17 video/x-ms-asf
-     17 text/html
-     17 audio/x-musepack
-     16 image/x-xbitmap
-</pre>
+<li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
+    experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
+    of teenagers more?</li>
 
-<p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
+<li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
+    be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
+    other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
+    them!)</li>
 
-<pre>
-  count MIME type
-  ----- -----------------------
-     31 text/plain
-     31 image/png
-     31 image/jpeg
-     29 audio/mpeg
-     28 application/ogg
-     27 image/gif
-     26 image/tiff
-     26 audio/x-mp3
-     23 audio/x-wav
-     22 image/bmp
-     21 audio/x-flac
-     20 audio/x-mpegurl
-     19 audio/x-mpeg
-     18 video/x-ms-asf
-     18 video/mpeg
-     18 audio/x-scpls
-     18 application/x-ogg
-     17 audio/x-musepack
-     16 video/x-ms-wmv
-     16 video/x-msvideo
-</pre>
+<li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
+    lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
+    person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
 
-<p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
-information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
-it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
-issues.</p>
+</ul>
 
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
-discovering a typo in my script.</p>
+<p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
+example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
+it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
+people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
+very hard to convert against their will.</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -412,119 +482,131 @@ discovering a typo in my script.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a></div>
-      <div class="date">15th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
-values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
-dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
-modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
-to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
-packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
-discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
-packages.</p>
-
-<p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
-containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
-the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
-modalias.</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-Package: package-name
-<br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
-for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
-
-<p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
-cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-Package: cheese
-<br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
-CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-Package: pcmciautils
-<br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
-plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-Package: colorhug-client
-<br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
-file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
-to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
-
-<p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
-announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
-This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
-Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
-hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
-tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
-is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
-Raring.</p>
-
-<p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
-the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
-implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
-each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
-try the
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
-shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
-hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
-repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
-
-<p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
-install yubikey-personalization:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-% ./hw-support-lookup
-<br>yubikey-personalization
-<br>%
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
-propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-% ./hw-support-lookup 
-<br>pcmciautils
-<br>%
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
-database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
-
-<p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
-packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
-kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
-extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
-packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
-/lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
-generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
-see if it work.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
-packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
-machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a></div>
+      <div class="date">12th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>There is a certain cross-over between the
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
+project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
+effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
+Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
+days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
+getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
+
+<p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
+opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
+each other.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
+first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
+[Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
+London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
+Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
+it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
+was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
+day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
+over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
+been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
+still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
+we'll get there one day.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
+it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
+that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
+very high quality work.</p>
+
+<p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
+set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
+with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
+helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
+community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
+separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
+what I originally rambled on about)</p>
+
+<p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
+project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
+think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
+content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
+on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
+years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
+concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
+more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
+myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
+currently.</p>
+
+<p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
+for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
+their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
+educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
+have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
+much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
+autonomous.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
+Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
+some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
+particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
+so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
+
+<p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
+git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
+which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
+while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
+Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
+it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
+up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
+X.</p>
+
+<p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
+using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
+people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
+it :p)
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
+many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
+don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
+that.</p>
+
+<p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
+problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
+advantage of that.</p>
+
+<p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
+some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
+Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
+general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
+Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
+that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
+best solution for them.</p>
+
+<p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
+educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
+make a decision that would work for them.</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -532,260 +614,234 @@ machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a></div>
-      <div class="date">14th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
-information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
-hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
-to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
-in
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
-Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
-
-<p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
-
-<p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
-values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
-&lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
-&lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
-&lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
-&lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
-
-<p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
-this shell script:</p>
-
-<pre>
-find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
-</pre>
-
-<p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
-using modinfo:</p>
-
-<pre>
-% /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
-alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
-alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
-%
-</pre>
-
-<p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
-
-<p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
-Bridge memory controller:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>This represent these values:</p>
-
-<pre>
- v   00008086  (vendor)
- d   00002770  (device)
- sv  00001028  (subvendor)
- sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
- bc  06        (bus class)
- sc  00        (bus subclass)
- i   00        (interface)
-</pre>
-
-<p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
--n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
-0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
-0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
-
-<p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
-means.</p>
-
-<p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
-
-<p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
-USB hub in a laptop:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a></div>
+      <div class="date">11th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
+the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
+or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
+last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
+on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
+The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
+control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
+turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
+not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
+i915 driver used by the
+<a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
+EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
+
+<p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
+i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
+/etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
+option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
+can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
 
 <pre>
- v    1D6B  (device vendor)
- p    0001  (device product)
- d    0206  (bcddevice)
- dc     09  (device class)
- dsc    00  (device subclass)
- dp     00  (device protocol)
- ic     09  (interface class)
- isc    00  (interface subclass)
- ip     00  (interface protocol)
+echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
+update-initramfs -u -k all
 </pre>
 
-<p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
-class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
-these alias entries show up:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
-<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
-<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
-<br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
-</blockquote></p>
+<p>Since March 2012 there is
+<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
+mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
+hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
+brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
+<a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
+intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
+<tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
+struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
+number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
+number.</p>
+
+<p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
+-vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
+    3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
+    (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
+ Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
+ Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
+    ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
+    <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
+ Latency: 0
+ Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
+ Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
+ Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
+ Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
+ Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
+ Capabilities: <access denied>
+ Kernel driver in use: i915
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
+       ...
+        /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
+	{ 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
+       ...
+}
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
+<tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
+invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
+<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
+(at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
+developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
+yet shown up in
+<a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
+web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
+emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
+the Debian bug tracking system instead as
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
+sure the patch is not lost.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
+with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
+worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
+something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
+the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
+have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
+this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
+developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
+developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
+during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
+you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
+</div>
+      <div class="tags">
+        
+        
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
+        
+        
+      </div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="padding"></div>
+    
+    <div class="entry">
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a></div>
+      <div class="date">10th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
+today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
+
+<p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
+2013-06-10</strong></p>
+
+<p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
+alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
+
+<p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
+Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
+out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
+network. Immediately 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, DVD 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
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
+than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
+the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
+and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
+
+<p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
+this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
+Squeeze release.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
 
-<p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
-camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
-microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
+<ul>
 
-<p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
+<li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1) 
+<li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703). 
+<li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4. 
+<li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default. 
+<li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default. 
 
-<p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
-receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
+</ul>
 
-<p><blockquote>
-acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
-</blockquote></p>
+<p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
 
-<p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
+<ul>
 
-<p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
+<li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used. 
+<li>Updated translation of the installation. 
+<li>New Romanian translation. 
+<li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat. 
+<li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
+<li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments. 
+<li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile. 
+<li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS. 
+<li>More testsuite tests. 
+<li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust. 
+<li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration. 
 
-<p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
-and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
-/sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
+<li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
+LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
 
-<p><blockquote>
-dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
-</blockquote></p>
+<li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
+them up with GOsa².</li>
 
-<p>The values present are</p>
+<li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
 
-<pre>
- bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
- bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
- bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
- svn  IBM            (system vendor)
- pn   2371H4G        (product name)
- pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
- rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
- rn   2371H4G        (board name)
- rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
- cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
- ct   10             (chassis type)
- cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
-</pre>
+<li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
+slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
+entered password). </li>
 
-<p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
-found in the dmidecode source:</p>
+</ul>
 
-<pre>
-  3 Desktop
-  4 Low Profile Desktop
-  5 Pizza Box
-  6 Mini Tower
-  7 Tower
-  8 Portable
-  9 Laptop
- 10 Notebook
- 11 Hand Held
- 12 Docking Station
- 13 All In One
- 14 Sub Notebook
- 15 Space-saving
- 16 Lunch Box
- 17 Main Server Chassis
- 18 Expansion Chassis
- 19 Sub Chassis
- 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
- 21 Peripheral Chassis
- 22 RAID Chassis
- 23 Rack Mount Chassis
- 24 Sealed-case PC
- 25 Multi-system
- 26 CompactPCI
- 27 AdvancedTCA
- 28 Blade
- 29 Blade Enclosing
-</pre>
+<p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
 
-<p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
-table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
-claim it is a desktop.</p>
+<ul>
 
-<p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
+<li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
 
-<p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
-test machine:</p>
+<li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
+available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
+missing import feature).</li>
 
-<p><blockquote>
-serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
-</blockquote></p>
+<li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
 
-<p>The values present are</p>
+<li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
+own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
+unfixed.</li>
 
-<pre>
-  ty  01  (type)
-  pr  00  (prototype)
-  id  00  (id)
-  ex  00  (extra)
-</pre>
+</ul>
 
-<p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
-the valid values are.</p>
+<p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
 
-<p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
+<p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
 
-<p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
-file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
-ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
-mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
-vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
-these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
-hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
+<ul>
 
-<p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
+<li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
 
-<p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
-one can use the following shell script:</p>
+<li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
 
-<pre>
-  for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
-    echo "$id" ; \
-    /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
-  done
-</pre>
+<li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
 
-<p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
-list is very long on my test machine):</p>
+</ul>
 
-<pre>
-  acpi:ACPI0003:
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko 
-  acpi:device:
-  FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
-  acpi:IBM0068:
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko 
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko 
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko 
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko 
-  acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko 
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko 
-    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko 
-  [...]
-</pre>
+<p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178 
+<br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
 
-<p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
-packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
-machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
+<p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
 
-<p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
-"find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
-in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
+<p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -793,31 +849,38 @@ in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a></div>
-      <div class="date">10th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
-for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
-Launcher and updated the Debian package
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
-sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
-also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
-hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
-plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
-git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
-contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
-is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
-years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
-the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
-bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
-the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
-view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
-git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a></div>
+      <div class="date"> 5th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
+We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
+hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
+skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
+the project:
+
+<ol>
+
+<li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
+  (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
+  <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
+  This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
+  Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
+
+<li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
+  using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
+  major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
+  This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
+  #698840</a>.</li>
+
+</ol>
+
+<p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
+(<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
+irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -825,126 +888,145 @@ git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
     <div class="padding"></div>
     
     <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a></div>
-      <div class="date"> 9th January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
-general, is that there is a great package management system with the
-ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
-from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
-install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
-machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
-Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
-suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
-I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
-yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
-is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
-
-<p>Some years ago, I proposed to
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
-the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
-simple:
+      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a></div>
+      <div class="date"> 4th June 2013</div>
+      <div class="body"><p>It has been a while since my last English
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
+interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
+pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
+time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
+in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
+professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
+mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
+probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
+
+<p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
+and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
+packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
+Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
+then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
+manual.
+
+<p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
+virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
+shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
+how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
+
+<p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
+ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
+by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
+me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
+there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
+to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
+artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
+<a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
+movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
+<a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
+
+<p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
+Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
+beautiful project.</p>
+  
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
+community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
+fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
+  
+<p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
+distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
+of educational free software.</p>
+  
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
+project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
+not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
+solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
+is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
+
+<p>One can find support from a company by looking at
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
+wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
+companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
+Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
+for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
+consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
+support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
+  
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
+most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
+scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
+also using the mathematical software
+<a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
+<a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
+source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
+
+<p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
+using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
+statistics?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
+university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
+Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
+geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
 
 <ul>
 
-<li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
-  starting when a user log in.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
+<a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
+constructions in planar geometry
 
-<li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
-  hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
+to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
+groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
 
-<li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
-  database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
-  packages.</li>
+</ul>
 
-<li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
-  package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
+<p>I like also
+<a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
+provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
+<a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
+  
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 
-</ul>
+<p>My suggestions would be to</p>
 
-<p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
-initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
-discover database to find packages and
-<a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
-packages.</p>
-
-<p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
-draft package is now checked into
-<a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
-Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
-package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
-the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
-2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current 
-<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
-package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
-/proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
-libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
-version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
-because of the freeze).</p>
-
-<p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
-desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
-inserted):</p>
-
-<p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
-
-<p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
-install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
-program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
-
-<p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
-happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
-from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
-list the package you would like to have installed when a given
-hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
-reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
-such mapping, please let me know.</p>
-
-<p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
-should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
-the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
-dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
-on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
-How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
-mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
-popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
-not be installed?</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
-please send me an email. :)</p>
-</div>
-      <div class="tags">
-        
-        
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>. 
-        
-        
-      </div>
-    </div>
-    <div class="padding"></div>
-    
-    <div class="entry">
-      <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a></div>
-      <div class="date"> 2nd January 2013</div>
-      <div class="body"><p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
-<a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
-NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
-discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
-already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
-you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
-irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
-Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
-and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
-
-<p>Update 2012-01-03: A
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
-including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
+<ul>
+
+<li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
+
+<li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
+    well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
+    OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
+
+<li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
+
+<li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
+    system.</li>
+
+</ul>
 </div>
       <div class="tags">
         
         
-        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>. 
+        Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>. 
         
         
       </div>
@@ -964,6 +1046,18 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
 
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
+
+<li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (2)</a></li>
+
 </ul></li>
 
 <li>2012
@@ -1106,37 +1200,37 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (5)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (69)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (79)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (136)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (175)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (205)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (5)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
 
@@ -1146,17 +1240,17 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (219)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (234)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (152)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (61)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
 
@@ -1164,7 +1258,7 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 
@@ -1172,25 +1266,25 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
 
- <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
+ <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
 
  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
 
@@ -1201,7 +1295,7 @@ including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 
     </div>
     <p style="text-align: right">
- Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
+ Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
 </p>
 
   </body>