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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <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>
31 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
32 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
33 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
34 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
35 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
36 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
37 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
38 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
39 not a durable solution.
41 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
42 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
46 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
48 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
49 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
50 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
51 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
52 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
53 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
54 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
55 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
57 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
59 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
64 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
65 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
66 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
67 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
68 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
69 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
70 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
73 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
74 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
75 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
76 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
77 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
78 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
84 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>.
89 <div class=
"padding"></div>
93 <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>
99 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
100 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
101 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
102 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
103 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
104 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
105 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
111 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
116 version = pkg.candidate
118 version = pkg.installed
121 record = version.record
122 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
124 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
126 t = t.rstrip().strip()
128 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
130 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
131 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
132 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
133 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
134 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
138 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
141 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
142 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
144 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
145 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
150 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
151 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
152 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
153 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
155 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
156 request for icweasel support for this feature is
157 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
158 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
159 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
160 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
166 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>.
171 <div class=
"padding"></div>
175 <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>
181 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
182 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
183 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
184 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
185 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
186 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
187 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
188 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
190 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
191 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
192 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
194 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
195 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
196 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
197 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
198 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
200 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
204 ----- -----------------------
227 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
231 ----- -----------------------
254 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
258 ----- -----------------------
281 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
282 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
283 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
286 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
287 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
293 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>.
298 <div class=
"padding"></div>
302 <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>
308 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
309 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
310 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
311 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
312 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
313 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
314 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
315 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
316 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
319 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
320 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
321 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
325 Package: package-name
326 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
329 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
330 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
332 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
333 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
337 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
340 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
341 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
345 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
348 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
349 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
352 Package: colorhug-client
353 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
356 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
357 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
358 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
360 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
361 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
362 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
363 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
364 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
365 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
366 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
369 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
370 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
371 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
372 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
374 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
375 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
376 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
377 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
379 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
380 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
383 % ./hw-support-lookup
384 <br>yubikey-personalization
388 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
389 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
392 % ./hw-support-lookup
397 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
398 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
399 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
401 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
402 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
403 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
404 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
405 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
406 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
407 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
410 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
411 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
412 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
413 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
419 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>.
424 <div class=
"padding"></div>
428 <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>
434 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
435 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
436 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
437 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
439 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
440 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
442 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
444 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
445 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
446 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
447 <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> >,
448 <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> > and
449 <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> >.
451 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
452 this shell script:
</p>
455 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
458 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
462 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
463 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
464 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
468 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
470 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
471 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
474 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
477 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
482 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
483 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
489 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
490 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
491 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
492 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
494 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
497 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
499 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
500 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
503 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
506 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
509 v
1D6B (device vendor)
510 p
0001 (device product)
513 dsc
00 (device subclass)
514 dp
00 (device protocol)
515 ic
09 (interface class)
516 isc
00 (interface subclass)
517 ip
00 (interface protocol)
520 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
521 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
522 these alias entries show up:
</p>
525 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
526 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
527 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
528 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
531 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
532 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
533 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
535 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
537 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
538 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
541 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
544 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
546 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
548 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
549 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
550 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
553 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
556 <p>The values present are
</p>
559 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
560 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
561 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
562 svn IBM (system vendor)
563 pn
2371H4G (product name)
564 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
565 rvn IBM (board vendor)
566 rn
2371H4G (board name)
567 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
568 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
570 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
573 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
574 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
578 4 Low Profile Desktop
591 17 Main Server Chassis
594 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
595 21 Peripheral Chassis
597 23 Rack Mount Chassis
606 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
607 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
608 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
610 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
612 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
616 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
619 <p>The values present are
</p>
628 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
629 the valid values are.
</p>
631 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
633 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
634 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
635 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
636 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
637 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
638 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
639 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
641 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
643 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
644 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
647 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
649 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
653 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
654 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
658 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
660 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
662 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
663 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
664 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
665 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
666 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
667 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
668 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
669 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
673 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
674 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
675 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
676 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
678 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
679 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
680 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
686 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>.
691 <div class=
"padding"></div>
695 <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>
701 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
702 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
703 Launcher and updated the Debian package
704 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
705 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
706 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
707 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
708 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
709 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
710 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
711 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
712 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
713 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
714 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
715 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
716 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
717 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
718 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
724 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>.
729 <div class="padding
"></div>
733 <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>
739 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
740 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
741 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
742 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
743 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
744 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
745 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
746 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
747 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
748 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
749 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
751 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
752 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
753 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
758 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
759 starting when a user log in.</li>
761 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
762 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
764 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
765 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
768 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
769 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
773 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
774 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
775 discover database to find packages and
776 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
779 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
780 draft package is now checked into
781 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
782 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
783 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
784 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
785 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
786 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
787 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
788 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
789 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
790 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
791 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
792 because of the freeze).</p>
794 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
795 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
798 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
800 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
801 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
802 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
804 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
805 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
806 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
807 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
808 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
809 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
810 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
812 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
813 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
814 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
815 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
816 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
817 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
818 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
819 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
820 not be installed?
</p>
822 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
823 please send me an email. :)
</p>
829 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>.
834 <div class=
"padding"></div>
838 <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>
844 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
845 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
846 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
847 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
848 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
849 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
850 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
851 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
852 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
853 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
855 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
856 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
857 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
863 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>.
868 <div class=
"padding"></div>
872 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
878 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
879 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
880 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
881 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
882 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
883 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
884 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
885 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
886 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
887 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
888 followed by many others. :)
</p>
890 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
891 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
892 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
893 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
899 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>.
904 <div class=
"padding"></div>
908 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version
0.7.2-
2 to Debian Squeeze
</a>
914 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
915 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
917 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
918 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
919 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
920 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
921 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
922 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
923 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
924 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
925 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
928 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
929 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
930 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
933 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
935 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
936 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
939 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
940 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
941 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
942 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
943 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
944 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
945 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
946 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
947 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
949 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
950 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
951 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
957 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
962 <div class=
"padding"></div>
966 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
972 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
973 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
974 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
975 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
976 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
977 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
978 is now maintained by a
979 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
980 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
981 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
982 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
983 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
984 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
985 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
986 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
987 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
989 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
990 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
993 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
994 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
995 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
996 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
997 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
998 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
999 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1000 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
1001 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1002 new version to unstable.
1004 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1005 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
1006 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1007 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1008 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1009 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1010 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1011 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
1012 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1013 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1014 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
1015 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1016 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1017 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
1018 have not tested them.
</p>
1021 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1022 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1023 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1024 years ago, as can be
1025 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1026 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
1027 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1028 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1029 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
1030 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1031 the same address as last time,
1032 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1038 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1043 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1047 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format
</a>
1053 <p>A few days ago I came across
1054 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
1055 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
1056 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
1057 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
1058 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
1059 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
1060 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
1061 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
1062 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
1064 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
1065 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
1066 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
1067 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
1070 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
1071 Expenses:Books $
20.00
1075 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
1076 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
1077 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
1079 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
1081 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
1083 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
1084 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
1085 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
1086 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
1087 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
1089 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
1090 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
1091 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
1092 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
1093 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
1095 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
1096 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
1097 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
1098 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
1099 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
1100 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
1101 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
1102 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
1103 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
1109 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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
1114 <div class="padding
"></div>
1118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html
">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
1124 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/
">University of
1125 Oslo</a>, we use the
1126 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/
">Cerebrum user
1127 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
1128 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
1129 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC
">XML-RPC</a> API, but
1130 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
1131 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
1132 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
1133 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
1136 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
1137 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/
">bofh
1138 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
1139 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
1140 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html
">a
1141 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
1143 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
1144 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
1145 user currently logged in:</p>
1148 #!/usr/bin/env python
1151 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
1152 username = getpass.getuser()
1153 password = getpass.getpass()
1154 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
1155 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
1156 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
1157 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
1158 result = server.logout(sessionid)
1162 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
1163 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.
</p>
1169 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
1174 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1178 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?
</a>
1184 <p>While working on a
1185 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
1186 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a> (
76% done),
1187 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
1188 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
1189 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
1190 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
</p>
1192 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
1193 <a href=
"http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
1194 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
1195 by John Perry Barlow
</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
1196 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
1197 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
1198 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
1199 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
1200 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
1201 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
1204 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
1205 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
1206 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
1207 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
1208 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
1209 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
1210 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
1211 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
</p>
1213 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
1214 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
1215 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
1216 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
1217 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
1218 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
1219 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
1220 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
1221 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
1222 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
1223 correct right holder.
</p>
1225 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
1226 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
1227 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
1228 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
1229 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
1230 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
1231 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
1232 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
1233 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
1234 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
1235 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
1236 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
1237 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
1238 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
</p>
1240 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
1241 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
1242 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
</p>
1244 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
1245 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
</p>
1251 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
1256 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1260 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß
</a>
1266 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the
<a
1267 href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1268 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
1269 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
1270 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
1271 the people behind the German
1272 "
<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
1273 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
1274 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
1276 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1278 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
1279 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
1280 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
1282 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
1283 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
1284 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
1285 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
1286 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
1287 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
1289 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
1290 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
1291 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
1292 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
1293 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
1294 relationship management and the communication processes in the
1297 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
1298 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
1299 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
1301 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1302 project?
</strong></p>
1304 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
1306 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
1307 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
1308 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
1309 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
1310 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
1311 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
1312 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
1313 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
1314 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
1317 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
1318 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
1319 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
1320 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
1321 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
1322 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
1325 <p>For information about our school project you can read
1326 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
1327 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
1329 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1332 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
1333 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
1335 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
1336 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
1337 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
1338 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
1339 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
1340 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
1341 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
1342 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
1343 teachers, parents...
</p>
1345 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1348 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
1349 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1351 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
1352 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
1353 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
1354 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
1355 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1357 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
1358 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
1359 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
1360 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
1361 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
1362 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
1363 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1365 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1367 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
1368 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
1369 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
1370 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
1372 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1373 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1375 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
1376 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
1377 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
1378 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
1379 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
1383 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
1384 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
1385 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
1387 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
1388 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
1389 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
1390 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
1391 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
1392 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
1393 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
1395 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
1396 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
1397 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
1398 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
1406 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>.
1411 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1415 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin
</a>
1421 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
1422 <a href=
"http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
1423 a report (PDF)
</a> about virtual currencies and
1424 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>. It is interesting to
1425 see how a member of the bitcoin community
1426 <a href=
"http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
1427 the report
</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
1428 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
1429 competition. My thoughts go to the
1430 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment
</a> with
1431 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
1432 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in
1933. A successful
1433 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
1434 powerful forces to work against it.
</p>
1436 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
1437 that the community already seem to have
1438 <a href=
"http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
1439 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme
</a>. Not very surprising, given
1440 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
1441 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
1442 wealth is available.
</p>
1448 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
1453 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1457 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick
</a>
1463 <p>I work at the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
1464 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
1465 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
1466 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association
</a>, which in turn
1467 make me a member of
<a href=
"http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX
</a>. NUUG
1468 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
1469 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
1470 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
1471 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
1472 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:
</a> in the
1473 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
1476 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
1477 article by
<a href=
"http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick
</a> from
1478 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
1479 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
1480 Takes Us Down
</a>" (longer version also
1481 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/
2012-
06-
30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf
">available
1482 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
1483 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
1484 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
1485 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
1486 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
1487 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
1489 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
1490 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
1491 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
1492 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
1493 article: First the unplanned outage:
1496 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
1497 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
1498 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
1499 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
1500 Duration: 40 minutes
1501 Scope: Exchange 2003
1502 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
1505 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
1506 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
1510 Next the planned outage:
1513 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
1514 Severity: Major (Planned)
1515 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
1516 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
1519 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
1520 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
1522 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
1523 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
1528 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
1529 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
1530 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
1531 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
1532 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
1533 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
1534 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
1536 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
1537 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
1538 university too. We do register
1539 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/
">planned
1540 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
1541 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
1542 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
1543 for other sites to consider too?</p>
1549 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
1554 <div class="padding
"></div>
1558 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html
">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
1564 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
1565 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/
2012/
10/
22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
">how
1566 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
1567 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
1568 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
1569 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
1570 background information is available in Norwegian from
1571 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon
">digi.no</a>.
1572 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
1573 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
1574 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
1576 <a href="http://boingboing.net/
2009/
07/
20/amazons-orwellian-de.html
">
1577 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
1578 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
1579 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
1581 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/
07/
18/technology/companies/
18amazon.html
">Amazon
1582 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
1585 <p>And thought this action is
1586 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/
904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende
">against
1587 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
1588 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
1589 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
1590 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
1593 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
1594 unacceptable terms. For example
1595 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/
">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
1596 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/
">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
1597 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts
">The Internet
1598 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
1599 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
1601 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
1602 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
1603 restored the account of the user, as reported by
1604 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904675/helomvending-fra-amazon
">digi.no</a>
1605 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/
1.8368487">NRK</a>.
1606 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
1607 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
1608 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
1609 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
1610 reading two opinions from
1611 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2012/
10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm
">Simon
1613 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm
">Glen
1614 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
1615 details about the original story.</p>
1621 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>.
1626 <div class="padding
"></div>
1630 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html
">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
1636 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
1637 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
1638 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
1639 across a marvellous drawing by
1640 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html
">Clay Bennett</a>
1641 visualising some of what is going on.
1643 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html
">
1644 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg
"></a></p>
1647 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
1648 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
1651 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
1652 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
1653 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
1654 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
">the
1655 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
1656 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
1662 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
1667 <div class="padding
"></div>
1671 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html
">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
1677 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
1678 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/
2012/
10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html
">Eddy
1679 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
1680 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
1681 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
1682 <a href=
"http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
1683 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions
</a>, the producer
1684 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
1685 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
1686 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
1687 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
1688 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
1691 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
1692 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
1693 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
1694 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
1695 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
1696 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
1697 to argue its side.
</p>
1699 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
1700 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
1701 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
1702 effect
</a> can make it rethink its strategy.
</p>
1704 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
1705 <a href=
"http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
1706 victims of detoxification
</a>.
</p>
1712 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis
</a>.
1717 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1721 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?
</a>
1727 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
1728 <a href=
"http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
1729 the computer science book collection available in his local
1730 library
</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
1731 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
1732 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
1733 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
1734 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
1735 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
1736 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
1737 recently published books.
</p>
1739 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
1740 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
1741 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
1742 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
1743 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
1744 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
1745 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
1746 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
1747 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
1748 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
1749 collection
</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
1750 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
1751 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
1752 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
1753 for the library that evening.
</p>
1755 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
1756 going to know that for example
1757 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
1758 Practice of Programming
</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
1759 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
1760 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
1761 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
1762 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
1763 book right away.
</p>
1769 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1774 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1778 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
1784 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
1785 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
1786 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1787 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
1788 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
1789 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
1792 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1793 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
1794 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
1795 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
1796 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
1797 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
1798 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
1800 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1802 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
1803 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
1804 the project files currently available from
1805 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
1807 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1809 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
1811 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
1812 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
1813 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1814 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
1820 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
1825 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1829 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
1835 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
1836 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1837 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
1838 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
1839 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
1840 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
1841 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
1843 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1845 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
1846 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
1847 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
1848 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
1849 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
1850 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
1851 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
1852 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
1853 training is anyway very important
</p>
1855 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
1856 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
1857 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
1858 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
1859 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
1861 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1862 project?
</strong></p>
1864 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
1865 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
1866 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
1867 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
1868 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
1871 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1874 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
1875 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
1876 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
1877 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
1878 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
1879 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
1880 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
1881 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
1884 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1887 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
1888 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
1889 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
1890 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
1891 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
1892 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
1893 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
1894 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
1896 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1898 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
1899 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
1900 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
1901 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
1904 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
1905 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
1906 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
1907 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
1909 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1910 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1912 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
1913 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
1914 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
1916 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
1917 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
1920 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
1921 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
1922 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
1923 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
1924 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
1925 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
1926 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
1932 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>.
1937 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1941 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
1948 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
1949 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
1950 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
1951 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
1952 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
1953 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
1954 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
1956 <a href=
"http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created
2012-
08-
20</a>. It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
1957 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
1959 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
1960 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
1961 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
1962 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
1963 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
1964 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
1965 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
1966 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
1968 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
1969 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
1976 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
1981 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1985 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
1991 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
1993 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
1994 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
1995 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
1996 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
1997 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
1998 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
1999 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
2000 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2001 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2002 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
2004 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2005 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2006 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2007 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
2009 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
2010 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
2016 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
2021 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2025 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
2032 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2033 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2034 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2035 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2036 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
2038 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2039 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2040 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2041 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
2043 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2044 PostScript formats at
2045 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2046 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
2052 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/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
2057 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2061 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)
</a>
2067 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
2068 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
2069 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
2070 revisit the great site
2071 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
2072 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
2073 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
2079 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
2084 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2088 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
2094 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
2095 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
2096 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2097 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
2098 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
2099 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
2100 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
2101 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
2102 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
2103 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
2105 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2106 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
2107 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
2109 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
2110 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
2111 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
2112 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
2113 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
2116 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2118 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
2119 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
2120 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
2121 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
2122 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
2123 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
2125 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2126 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2127 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2128 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
2129 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
2130 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
2131 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
2132 project files currently available from
<a
2133 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2135 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2137 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
2139 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
2140 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
2141 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2142 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
2148 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2153 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2157 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...
</a>
2163 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
2164 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2165 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
2166 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2167 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
2168 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
2169 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
2170 case for the language
2171 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
2172 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
2174 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2175 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2176 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2177 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
2178 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
2180 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2181 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
2182 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
2183 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2184 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
2185 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2186 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2187 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2188 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
2191 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
2192 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
2193 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
2194 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
2195 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2196 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
2197 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
2198 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2199 at the same time. :(
</p>
2201 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
2202 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2205 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
2211 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2216 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2220 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
2226 <p>I tried to send this text to the
2227 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
2228 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
2229 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2230 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2231 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2234 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2235 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
2237 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2238 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2239 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
2241 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
2242 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2243 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2244 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2247 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2248 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2249 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2254 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
2255 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
2256 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
2257 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
2258 index references spanning several pages (See
2259 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
2260 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2261 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
2263 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2264 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
2267 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2268 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2269 footnote and text body, see
2270 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
2271 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2272 refs listed are not right).
</li>
2274 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
2276 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2277 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
2281 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2282 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2283 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
2285 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
2291 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2296 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2300 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian -
5 chapters done,
74 percent left to do
</a>
2306 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
2307 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
2308 norwegian version
</a> of the book
2309 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2310 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
2311 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
2312 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
2313 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2315 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
2316 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
2317 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
2318 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
2319 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
2320 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
2321 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
2322 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
2325 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
2326 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
2333 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
2338 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2342 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a>
2348 <p>I am currently working on a
2349 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
2350 to translate
</a> the book
2351 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
2352 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
2353 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
2354 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
2355 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
2356 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
2357 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2359 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
2360 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
2361 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
2362 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
2363 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
2364 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
2365 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
2366 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
2367 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
2373 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
2378 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2382 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
2388 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2389 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
2390 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
2391 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
2392 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
2393 to adjust and scale the just released
2394 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2395 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
2396 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
2398 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2400 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
2401 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
2402 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
2403 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
2404 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
2405 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
2406 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
2407 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
2409 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2410 project?
</strong></p>
2412 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
2413 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
2414 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
2415 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
2416 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
2417 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
2419 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2422 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
2423 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
2424 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
2425 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
2426 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
2427 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
2428 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
2429 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
2430 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
2431 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
2432 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
2433 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
2434 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
2435 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
2436 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
2437 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
2438 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
2439 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
2440 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
2441 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
2442 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
2443 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
2446 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2449 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
2450 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
2451 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
2452 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
2453 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
2454 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
2456 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
2457 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
2458 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
2459 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
2460 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
2461 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
2462 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
2463 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
2464 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
2465 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
2466 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
2467 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
2468 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
2469 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
2470 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
2472 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
2473 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
2474 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
2475 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
2476 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
2477 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
2478 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
2479 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
2481 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
2482 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
2483 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
2484 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
2485 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
2486 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
2487 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
2488 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
2489 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
2490 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
2491 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
2492 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
2493 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
2496 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
2497 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
2498 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
2499 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
2500 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
2501 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
2502 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
2503 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
2504 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
2506 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2508 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
2509 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
2510 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
2513 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2514 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2516 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
2517 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
2518 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
2519 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
2520 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
2521 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
2522 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
2523 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
2524 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
2525 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
2526 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
2527 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
2528 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
2529 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
2530 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
2532 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
2533 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
2534 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
2535 management with Airtime
</a>,
2536 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
2537 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
2538 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
2539 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
2540 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
2546 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>.
2551 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2555 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
2561 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
2562 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
2563 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
2564 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
2565 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
2566 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
2567 Steinberg in his blog post
2568 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
2569 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
2570 spending of your tax money.</p>
2572 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
2573 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
2574 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
2575 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
2576 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
2583 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>.
2588 <div class="padding
"></div>
2592 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
2598 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
2599 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
2600 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
2601 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
2602 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
2603 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
2604 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
2605 receive. The software is
2607 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
2608 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
2609 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
2610 both teachers and students. It is available both for
2611 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
2614 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
2615 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
2619 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
2620 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
2622 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
2623 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
2624 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
2625 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
2626 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
2627 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
2628 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
2629 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
2632 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
2633 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
2635 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
2636 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
2638 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
2639 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
2641 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
2643 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
2646 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
2647 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
2648 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
2649 (as separate sets)</li>
2651 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
2652 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
2655 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
2656 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
2659 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
2660 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
2661 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
2662 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
2663 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
2664 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
2665 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
2666 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
2667 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
2668 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
2669 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
2670 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
2672 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
2673 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
2676 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
2678 <li>Break periods</li>
2681 <li>Not available periods</li>
2682 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
2683 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2684 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2685 <li>Min hours daily</li>
2686 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2688 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2691 <li>For students (sets):
2693 <li>Not available periods</li>
2694 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
2695 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2696 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2697 <li>Min hours daily</li>
2698 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2700 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2703 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
2705 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
2706 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
2707 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
2708 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
2709 <li>End(s) students day</li>
2710 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
2711 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
2712 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
2713 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
2714 <li>Not overlapping</li>
2715 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
2716 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
2720 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
2722 <li>Room not available periods</li>
2725 <li>Home room(s)</li>
2726 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2727 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2731 <li>For students (sets):
2733 <li>Home room(s)</li>
2734 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2735 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2738 <li>Preferred room(s):
2740 <li>For a subject</li>
2741 <li>For an activity tag</li>
2742 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
2743 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
2747 <li>For a set of activities:
2749 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
2756 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
2757 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
2758 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
2759 manually, check it out.
2761 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
2762 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
2763 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
2764 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
2765 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
2772 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>.
2777 <div class="padding
"></div>
2781 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html
">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
2787 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
2788 project (Norwegian version of
2789 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
2790 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
2791 a problem with the municipalities using
2792 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
2793 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
2794 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
2795 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
2796 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
2797 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
2798 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
2799 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
2800 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
2801 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
2802 the From: header.</p>
2804 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
2805 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
2806 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
2807 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
2808 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
2809 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
2810 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
2813 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
2814 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
2815 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
2816 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
2817 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
2818 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
2819 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
2825 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
2830 <div class="padding
"></div>
2834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html
">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
2840 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
2841 another interview with the people behind
2842 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2843 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
2844 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
2845 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
2846 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
2847 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
2848 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2850 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2852 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
2853 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
2856 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2857 project?</strong></p>
2859 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
2860 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
2861 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
2862 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
2864 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2867 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
2868 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
2869 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
2870 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
2872 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2875 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
2876 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
2877 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
2878 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
2879 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
2880 technologies in school.</p>
2882 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2884 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
2885 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
2886 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
2888 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2889 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2891 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
2892 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
2893 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
2894 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
2896 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
2897 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
2898 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
2900 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
2901 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
2902 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
2903 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
2904 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
2905 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
2906 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
2907 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
2914 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>.
2919 <div class="padding
"></div>
2923 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2929 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2930 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2931 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
2932 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2933 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2934 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
2935 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2936 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2937 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
2938 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
2939 missing in my book.</p>
2941 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2942 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2943 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2944 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
2945 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
2946 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
2947 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2953 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/multimedia
">multimedia</a>.
2958 <div class="padding
"></div>
2962 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html
">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
2968 <p>During my work on
2969 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
2970 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
2971 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
2972 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
2977 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
2978 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
2979 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
2980 system depend on tasksel tasks in
2981 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
2984 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
2985 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
2986 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
2987 at least try to enable it for these services:
2990 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
2992 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
2993 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
2994 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
2995 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
2996 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
3000 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3001 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3002 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3003 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
3005 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
3006 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3007 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
3009 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3010 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
3011 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
3012 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3013 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
3014 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
3016 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3017 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3018 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3021 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3022 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3023 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
3025 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3026 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
3027 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
3028 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
3030 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3031 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3032 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3033 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
3035 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3036 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
3037 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
3039 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3040 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3041 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
3043 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3044 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
3045 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
3046 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
3047 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
3049 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3052 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
3053 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
3054 <li>and probably more?</li>
3057 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
3058 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
3059 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
3060 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
3061 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
3062 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
3063 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
3064 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
3067 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
3068 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
3069 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
3072 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
3073 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
3074 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
3075 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
3076 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
3078 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
3079 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
3080 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
3081 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
3082 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
3083 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
3085 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
3086 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
3087 There are at least three implementations,
3088 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
3089 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
3090 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
3091 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
3092 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
3093 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
3096 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
3097 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
3098 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
3099 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
3100 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
3101 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
3106 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
3113 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>.
3118 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3122 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience
</a>
3128 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
3129 <a href=
"http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
3130 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
3131 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
3132 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
3133 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
3134 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
3135 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
3136 be willing to pay for.
</p>
3138 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
3139 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
3140 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
3141 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
3148 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3153 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3157 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status
</a>
3164 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
3165 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
3166 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3167 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
3168 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
3169 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3170 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
3171 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
3172 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
3173 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3174 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
3176 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3180 % GET
<a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=
2v1xwn1
</a>
3181 supportstatus({"servicetag": "
2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "
2013-
11-
24", "shipped": "
2010-
11-
24", "scrapestamputc": "
2012-
06-
06T20:
26:
56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://
143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
3185 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3186 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
3187 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
3193 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
3198 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3202 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
3208 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3209 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3210 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3211 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3212 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3213 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
3215 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3217 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
3218 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3219 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3222 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3223 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3224 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3225 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3226 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
3228 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3229 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3230 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
3231 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3232 skills with communication skills.
</p>
3234 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3235 project?
</strong></p>
3237 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3238 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3239 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3240 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3241 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
3243 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3244 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3245 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
3246 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3247 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3248 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3249 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3250 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3251 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
3253 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3254 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3255 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
3257 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
3259 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3260 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3261 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3262 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
3263 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3264 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3265 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3266 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3267 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3268 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3271 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3272 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3273 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3274 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3275 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
3276 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
3278 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3279 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3280 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
3281 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3282 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3285 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3286 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3287 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3288 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3289 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
3291 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3292 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3293 avoidance do exist.
</p>
3295 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3296 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3297 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3298 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3299 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3300 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3301 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
3303 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3306 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3307 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3308 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3309 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3310 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3311 developers, etc.
</p>
3313 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3316 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
3318 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
3319 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
3320 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
3321 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
3322 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
3323 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
3326 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
3327 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
3328 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
3329 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
3330 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
3331 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
3332 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
3333 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
3334 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
3335 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
3337 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3339 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
3341 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
3342 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
3343 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
3345 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
3346 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
3347 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
3348 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
3350 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
3351 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
3352 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
3353 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
3356 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
3358 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3359 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3361 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
3368 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>.
3373 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3377 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status
</a>
3383 <p>A few years ago I wrote
3384 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
3385 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
3386 I have learned from colleges here at the
3387 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
3388 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
3389 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
3390 readable information about the support status. This perl code
3391 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
3398 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
3400 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
3401 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
3403 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
3404 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
3405 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
3407 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
3408 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
3409 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
3410 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
3412 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
3415 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
3421 'EntitlementData' =
> [
3423 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3424 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3426 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3430 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3431 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3433 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3437 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3438 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3440 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3445 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
3446 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
3447 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
3448 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
3450 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
3451 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
3452 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
3458 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
3460 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
3461 documentation
</a>, and according to
3462 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
3463 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
3464 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
3466 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
3467 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
3473 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
3478 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3482 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
3488 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
3489 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
3490 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
3491 running Debian Squeeze, where
3492 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
3493 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
3494 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
3495 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
3496 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
3499 <p>After calibration, I get a
3500 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
3501 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
3502 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
3503 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
3504 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
3505 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
3506 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
3507 monitor. After searching a bit, I
3508 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
3509 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
3513 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
3516 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
3517 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
3518 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
3525 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3530 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3534 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
3540 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
3541 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3542 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
3543 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
3544 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
3545 since then, helping to make sure the
3546 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3547 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
3549 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3551 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
3552 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
3553 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
3554 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
3555 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
3556 our computer network.
</p>
3558 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
3559 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
3562 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3563 project?
</strong></p>
3565 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
3566 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
3567 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
3568 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
3569 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
3570 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
3571 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
3572 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
3573 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
3574 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
3575 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
3576 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
3577 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
3578 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
3580 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3583 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
3584 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
3585 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
3586 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
3587 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
3588 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
3589 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
3590 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
3592 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3595 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
3596 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
3597 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
3598 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
3599 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
3600 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
3601 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
3602 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
3603 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
3604 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
3605 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
3606 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
3608 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3610 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
3611 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
3612 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
3614 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3615 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3619 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
3620 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
3621 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
3624 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
3625 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
3626 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
3627 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
3628 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
3630 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
3631 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
3632 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
3634 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
3635 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
3636 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
3637 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
3639 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
3640 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
3641 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
3643 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
3645 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
3646 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
3647 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
3648 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
3656 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>.
3661 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3665 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
3671 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
3672 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
3673 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
3674 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
3675 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
3677 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
3678 <a href=
"http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-
500-million/index.htm
</a>
3681 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
3682 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
3683 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
3684 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
3685 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
3688 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
3689 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
3690 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
3691 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
3692 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
3693 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
3694 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
3695 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
3696 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
3697 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
3698 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
3699 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
3700 of wasted effort.
</p>
3702 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
3703 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
3704 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
3707 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
3709 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
3710 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
3717 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
3722 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3726 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration
</a>
3733 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
3734 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
3735 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
3736 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
3737 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
3738 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
3739 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
3740 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
3741 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
3742 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
3744 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
3745 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
3752 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3757 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3761 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
3767 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
3768 publish another interview with the people behind
3769 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
3770 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
3771 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
3772 details get right before release.
3774 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3776 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
3777 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
3778 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
3779 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
3780 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
3781 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
3782 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
3783 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
3785 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
3786 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
3787 home since
2006.
</p>
3789 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3790 project?
</strong></p>
3792 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
3793 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
3794 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
3795 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
3796 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
3797 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
3799 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
3800 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
3801 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
3802 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
3803 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
3804 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
3805 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
3806 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
3807 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
3808 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
3809 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
3810 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
3811 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
3812 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
3813 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
3814 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
3816 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3819 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
3820 for me as today.
</p>
3822 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
3826 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
3827 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
3829 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
3832 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
3833 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
3834 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
3835 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
3838 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
3843 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
3844 came up in this way:
</p>
3848 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
3851 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
3852 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
3853 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
3855 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
3856 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
3857 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
3859 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
3860 different needs.
</li>
3862 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
3864 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
3865 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
3866 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
3868 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
3869 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
3873 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3878 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
3879 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
3880 whole municipality areas.
</li>
3882 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
3883 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
3886 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
3890 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3892 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
3893 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
3894 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
3895 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
3896 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
3897 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
3899 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
3900 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
3901 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
3902 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
3903 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
3905 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3906 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3908 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
3909 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
3910 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
3916 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>.
3921 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3925 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job
</a>
3931 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
3932 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
3934 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
3935 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
3936 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
3937 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
3938 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
3939 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
3940 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
3941 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
3942 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
3943 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
3944 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
3945 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
3946 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
3947 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
3948 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
3949 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
3951 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
3952 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
3953 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
3954 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
3955 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
3956 finally found a Danish supplier
3957 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
3958 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
3961 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
3962 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
3963 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
3964 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
3965 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
3972 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3977 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3981 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?
</a>
3987 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
3988 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
3989 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
3990 that the video editor application included with
3991 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
3992 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
3993 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
3996 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
3997 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
3998 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
4001 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
4004 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4005 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
4008 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4009 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
4011 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
4012 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4014 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
4015 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
4016 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4017 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
4018 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
4019 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4020 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
4022 <p>I know why I prefer
4023 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
4024 standards</a> also for video.</p>
4030 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
4035 <div class="padding
"></div>
4039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
4045 <p>Here in Norway, the
4046 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
4047 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
4048 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
4049 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4050 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4051 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4052 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4053 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
4054 on the same level.</p>
4056 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
4057 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
4058 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
4059 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4060 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4061 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4062 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4063 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
4064 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4065 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
4066 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4067 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4068 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4069 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4070 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4071 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
4072 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4073 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
4075 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4076 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4077 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
4078 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4079 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
4080 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
4081 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
4082 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
4084 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
4086 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
4087 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
4089 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
4090 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
4091 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
4092 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
4093 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
4094 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
4095 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
4096 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
4097 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
4103 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
4108 <div class="padding
"></div>
4112 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
4118 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
4119 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
4120 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
4121 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
4122 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
4123 up in the recently released
4124 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
4125 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4127 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4129 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
4130 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
4131 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
4132 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
4133 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
4134 information technology and science/technology.</p>
4136 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4137 project?</strong></p>
4139 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
4140 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
4141 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
4144 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4147 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
4148 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
4151 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4154 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4155 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4156 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
4157 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
4158 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4159 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4160 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
4162 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
4163 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
4165 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4167 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4168 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4169 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
4170 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
4172 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4173 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4175 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4176 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4177 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
4178 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4179 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
4180 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
4181 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
4183 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
4184 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4185 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
4186 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
4187 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4188 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4189 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
4190 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
4196 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>.
4201 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4205 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
4211 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4212 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
4213 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4215 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4216 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
4218 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4220 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4221 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
4223 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4224 project?
</strong></p>
4226 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
4227 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4228 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4229 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
4230 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4233 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4236 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4239 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
4240 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
4241 education system.
</p>
4243 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4244 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4245 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4246 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
4248 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4250 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4251 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4252 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
4254 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4255 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4257 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
4258 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4259 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
4265 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>.
4270 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4274 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround
</a>
4280 <p>Recently I have spent time with
4281 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
4282 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
4283 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4284 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
4285 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4286 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
4287 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
4288 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
4290 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
4291 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
4292 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
4293 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4294 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
4295 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
4296 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4297 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
4299 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4300 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
4301 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4302 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4303 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4304 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
4305 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
4306 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
4308 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4309 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4310 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4311 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4312 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
4313 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4314 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
4315 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
4316 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
4317 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
4319 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
4320 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
4321 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
4322 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
4324 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
4325 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
4331 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>.
4336 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4340 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
4346 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
4347 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
4348 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
4349 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
4350 for schools. Check out his article
4351 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
4352 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
4358 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>.
4363 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4367 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
4373 <p>Germany is a core area for the
4374 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
4375 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
4376 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
4378 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4380 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
4381 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
4382 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
4383 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
4384 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
4385 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
4386 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
4387 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
4389 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
4390 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
4391 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
4392 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
4393 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
4394 the end of April this year.</p>
4396 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4397 project?</strong></p>
4399 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
4400 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
4401 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
4402 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
4403 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
4404 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
4405 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
4406 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
4407 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
4408 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
4411 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
4412 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
4413 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
4414 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
4415 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
4416 the admin teachers.</p>
4418 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4421 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
4422 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
4423 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
4425 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
4426 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
4427 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
4428 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
4429 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
4431 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4436 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4438 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
4439 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
4440 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
4443 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4444 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4446 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
4447 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
4448 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
4454 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>.
4459 <div class="padding
"></div>
4463 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html
">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
4469 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4471 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
4472 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
4473 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
4474 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
4475 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
4476 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
4478 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
4479 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
4481 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
4482 <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis
"' />
4483 <p>Download video as
4484 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
4491 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>.
4496 <div class="padding
"></div>
4500 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
4506 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4507 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
4508 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
4509 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
4510 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
4512 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4514 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
4515 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
4516 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
4517 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
4518 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
4519 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
4520 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
4523 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4524 project?</strong></p>
4526 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
4527 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
4528 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
4529 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
4530 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
4531 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
4532 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
4533 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
4534 these things we decided to try it.</p>
4536 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4539 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
4540 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
4541 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
4542 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
4543 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
4544 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
4545 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
4546 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
4548 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4551 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
4552 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
4553 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
4554 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
4555 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
4557 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4559 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
4560 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
4561 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
4562 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
4565 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4566 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4568 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
4569 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
4570 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
4571 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
4572 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
4573 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
4574 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
4575 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
4576 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
4577 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
4578 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
4580 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
4581 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
4582 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
4588 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>.
4593 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4597 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
4603 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
4604 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
4605 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
4606 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
4610 <li>The documentation is written in a
4611 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
4612 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
4613 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
4616 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
4617 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
4618 with the translated text.
</li>
4620 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
4621 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
4622 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
4623 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
4626 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
4627 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
4629 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
4630 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
4634 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
4635 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
4636 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
4637 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
4638 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
4640 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
4641 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
4648 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>.
4653 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4657 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
4663 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
4664 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
4665 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
4666 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
4667 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
4668 you have not done so already.
</p>
4670 <p>I plan to present the new version at
4671 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
4672 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
4673 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
4679 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>.
4684 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4688 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
4694 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
4695 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
4696 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4697 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
4698 more international audience.
</p>
4700 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4701 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
4702 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
4703 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
4704 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
4705 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
4706 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
4709 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4711 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
4712 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
4713 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
4714 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
4715 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
4716 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
4717 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
4718 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
4719 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
4720 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
4721 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
4723 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4724 project?
</strong></p>
4726 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
4727 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
4728 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
4729 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
4730 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
4731 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
4732 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
4733 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
4734 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
4735 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
4736 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
4737 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
4738 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
4740 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4743 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
4744 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
4745 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
4746 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
4747 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
4748 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
4751 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4754 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
4755 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
4756 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
4757 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
4758 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
4759 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
4760 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
4761 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
4762 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
4763 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
4764 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
4765 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
4766 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
4767 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
4770 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4772 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
4773 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
4774 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
4775 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
4776 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
4777 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
4778 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
4779 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
4780 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
4781 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
4782 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
4784 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4785 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4787 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
4788 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
4789 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
4790 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
4791 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
4792 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
4793 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
4794 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
4795 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
4796 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
4797 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
4798 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
4804 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>.
4809 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4813 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze
</a>
4819 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4821 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
4822 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
4823 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
4824 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
4826 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
4827 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
4829 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
4830 <source src=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg;
codecs=
"theora, vorbis"'
/>
4831 <p>Download video as
4832 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
4839 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>.
4844 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4848 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
4854 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
4855 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4856 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
4857 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
4858 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
4859 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
4865 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>.
4870 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4874 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded
</a>
4880 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4881 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
4882 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
4883 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
4884 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
4885 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
4886 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
4887 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
4888 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
4889 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
4890 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
4891 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
4892 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
4895 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
4896 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
4898 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
4899 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
4900 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
4901 mean). I've been following
4902 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
4903 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
4904 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
4905 Check it out. :)
</p>
4911 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/video">video
</a>.
4916 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4920 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
4926 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
4927 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4928 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
4929 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
4930 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
4931 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
4932 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
4938 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>.
4943 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4947 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
4953 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
4954 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
4955 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
4956 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
4957 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
4958 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
4959 solution for your school.
</p>
4965 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>.
4970 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4974 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail
</a>
4980 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
4981 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
4982 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
4983 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
4984 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
4985 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
4986 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
4987 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
4988 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
4990 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
4991 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
4992 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
4993 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
4994 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
4997 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
4999 printf "Failed disk $d: "
5000 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
5004 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5005 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
5007 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
5010 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
5011 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
5012 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
5015 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5016 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5017 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5018 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
5019 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5020 mounted inside my box.
</p>
5022 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5023 Software RAID in the
5024 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
5025 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5026 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
5027 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5028 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5029 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
5035 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid
</a>.
5040 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5044 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
5050 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
5051 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
5052 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5053 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
5054 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
5055 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5056 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
5057 change the global proxy setting by editing
5058 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
5059 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
5061 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5062 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5063 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
5066 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5068 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5069 isPlainHostName(host) ||
5070 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
5073 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
5077 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
5080 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
5081 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
5084 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5085 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5087 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
5088 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
5089 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
5090 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5091 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
5092 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5093 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5094 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5095 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5096 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
5098 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5099 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5100 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5101 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5102 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
5103 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
5105 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5106 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5107 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5108 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5109 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
5110 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5111 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5112 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5113 the network setup changes.
</p>
5115 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
5116 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
5118 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
5119 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
5125 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>.
5130 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5134 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night
</a>
5140 <p>Since the Lenny version of
5141 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
5142 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
5143 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5144 in the morning. This is done using the
5145 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
5147 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5148 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
5149 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5150 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5151 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
5153 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
5154 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
5155 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5156 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5157 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
5159 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5160 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5161 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
5162 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
5163 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5164 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
5165 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
5167 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5168 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
5169 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5170 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
5171 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
5177 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>.
5182 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5186 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5192 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5193 publish the third beta version of
5194 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5195 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5196 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5197 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
5198 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
5199 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5200 on the project announcement list.
</p>
5202 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5203 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
5207 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5208 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5209 the installation.
</li>
5211 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5212 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
5214 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5215 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
5216 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
5218 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
5219 for the local system administrator is created during installation
5220 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5221 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5222 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5223 up to date on the system.
</li>
5227 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5228 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
5229 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5230 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
5232 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
5233 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
5234 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5235 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
5236 will see you there?
</p>
5242 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>.
5247 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5251 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
5257 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5258 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
5259 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5260 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5261 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
5262 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5263 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
5265 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5266 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5267 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5268 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
5269 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
5270 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5271 not taken care of by this.
</p>
5273 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
5274 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
5275 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
5276 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5277 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5278 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
5279 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5280 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
5281 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
5282 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5283 firmware packages.
</p>
5285 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5286 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5287 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5288 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
5289 initrd with extra firmware, the
5290 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
5291 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5292 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
5294 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5295 network cards working. For this,
5296 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
5297 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
5298 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
5300 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
5301 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5302 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
5304 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
5311 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>.
5316 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5320 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
5326 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
5327 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
5328 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
5329 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
5330 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
5332 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
5333 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
5334 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
5335 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
5336 this is done, log on to the central server and run
5337 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
5338 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
5339 will look similar to this:
</p>
5341 <p><blockquote><pre>
5342 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
5343 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
5344 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-
00-
01-
02-
03-
04-
06 [
10.0.16.20] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
06.
5346 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
5348 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5349 enter password: *******
5351 </pre></blockquote></p>
5353 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
5354 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
5355 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
5356 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
5357 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
5358 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
5359 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
5360 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
5361 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
5362 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
5363 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
5366 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
5367 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
5369 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
5370 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
5371 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
5377 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/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
5382 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5386 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
5392 <p>In the Squeeze version of
5393 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
5394 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
5395 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
5396 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
5397 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
5398 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
5401 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
5402 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
5403 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
5404 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
5406 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
5407 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
5410 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
5411 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
5412 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
5418 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/web">web
</a>.
5423 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5427 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5433 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
5434 the second beta version of
5435 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
5436 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
5437 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
5438 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
5439 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
5440 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5441 on the project announcement list.
</p>
5447 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>.
5452 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5456 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu
</a>
5462 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
5463 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
5464 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
5467 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
5468 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
5469 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
5470 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
5471 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
5472 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
5473 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
5475 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
5476 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
5477 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
5478 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
5479 because I was typing.
</P>
5481 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
5482 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
5483 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
5484 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
5485 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
5486 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
5487 generate entropy.
</p>
5490 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
5491 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
5492 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
5493 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
5499 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>.
5504 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5508 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
5514 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
5515 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
5516 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5517 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5518 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5519 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5520 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5521 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5522 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5523 the tools to do so.
</p>
5525 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5526 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
5527 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5528 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
5530 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5531 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
5532 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
5533 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5534 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5535 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5536 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5537 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
5539 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5540 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5541 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
5547 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5549 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5551 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
5553 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5554 eval "use $module;";
5556 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5557 system("yum install -y $pkg");
5558 eval "use $module;";
5562 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5568 sub run_firmware_script {
5569 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5571 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5574 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5576 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5577 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5579 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5583 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5584 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5585 # Run firmware packages
5586 for my $dir (@dirs) {
5587 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5588 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5589 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5590 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5591 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5599 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5600 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5605 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5608 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5610 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5611 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5613 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5617 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5618 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5619 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5620 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5623 for my $url (@paths) {
5624 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5626 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5628 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5629 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5633 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5634 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5640 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5644 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5645 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
5646 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
5647 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5648 my $filename = shift;
5650 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5652 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5654 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5656 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5658 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5659 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
5660 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
5662 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
5663 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
5665 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
5667 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5669 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
5672 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5673 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
5675 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5676 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5678 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
5679 for my $path (@paths) {
5680 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5681 push(@paths, $cpath);
5689 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5690 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
5691 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
5692 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5699 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>.
5704 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5708 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?
</a>
5714 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
5715 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
5716 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
5717 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
5718 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
5719 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
5720 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
5723 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
5724 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
5725 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
5726 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
5728 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
5729 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
5730 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
5731 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (about
5732 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
5733 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
5734 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
5735 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
5738 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
5742 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
5743 other relevant equipment.
</li>
5745 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
5749 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
5750 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
5751 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
5752 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
5753 books available.
</p>
5755 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
5756 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
5763 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
5768 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5772 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
5778 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
5779 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
5780 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
5781 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
5782 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
5783 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
5784 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
5785 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
5787 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
5791 # apt-get install lsdvd
5792 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
5793 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
5796 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
5797 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
5798 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
5799 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
5801 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
5802 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
5803 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
5808 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
5810 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
5811 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
5812 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
5813 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
5814 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
5817 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
5819 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
5820 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
5821 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
5822 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
5823 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
5825 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
5826 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
5827 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
5828 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
5829 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
5830 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
5836 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
5841 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5845 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel
1 different from single user boots?
</a>
5851 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5852 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5853 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
5854 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5855 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
5856 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5857 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
5858 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5859 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
5862 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5863 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5864 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5867 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5868 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
5869 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5870 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5871 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5872 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5873 hard to explain.
</p>
5875 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5876 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
5877 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
5878 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5879 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5880 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5881 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5882 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5883 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5884 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5885 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5888 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
5889 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5890 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
5891 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5892 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
5893 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
5894 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5895 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5896 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5898 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5899 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
5900 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5901 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5902 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5903 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5904 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5905 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5907 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5908 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
5909 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5915 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
5920 <div class="padding
"></div>
5924 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html
">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
5930 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5931 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
5932 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
5933 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
5934 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5935 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5936 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5937 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5938 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5939 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
5940 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5941 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5942 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5944 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
5945 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5946 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
5947 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
5948 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5949 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5950 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5951 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
5952 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5954 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5955 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5956 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5959 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
5960 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5961 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5962 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5963 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5964 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5965 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5966 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
5967 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5968 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5969 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5970 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
5971 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5972 find time to push this forward.</p>
5978 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
5983 <div class="padding
"></div>
5987 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html
">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
5993 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5994 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5995 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
5996 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5999 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6000 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6001 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6005 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6006 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6007 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6008 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6009 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
6010 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
6011 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6014 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6015 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6016 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6017 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6018 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6019 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6020 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
6021 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6022 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6023 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
6024 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6025 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6026 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6028 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6029 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6030 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6031 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
6032 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
6033 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6034 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
6035 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
6036 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6037 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6039 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6040 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6041 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6042 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
6043 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
6044 latter behaviour.</li>
6048 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6049 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6050 it do not matter much.</p>
6052 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6053 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
6054 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6060 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/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
6065 <div class="padding
"></div>
6069 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html
">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
6075 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
6076 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6077 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6078 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6079 security support for a few years.</p>
6081 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6082 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
6083 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6084 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6085 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
6086 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6087 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6088 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6089 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6090 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6091 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6092 easier in the future.</p>
6094 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6095 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6096 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
6097 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6098 do not have time for.</p>
6104 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/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>.
6109 <div class="padding
"></div>
6113 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
6120 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
6121 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
6123 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
6125 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
6126 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6127 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
6128 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
6134 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
6139 <div class="padding
"></div>
6143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html
">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
6149 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
6150 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
6151 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
6152 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6153 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6154 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6155 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6156 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6157 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6158 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
6160 <p>Where is it? Visit
6161 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
6162 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
6163 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
6164 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
6170 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
6175 <div class="padding
"></div>
6179 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html
">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
6185 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6186 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
6187 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
6188 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6189 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6190 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
6191 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6192 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6193 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6194 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6195 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6196 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
6197 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
6199 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6200 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
6201 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6202 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
6203 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6204 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6205 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6206 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6207 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6208 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6209 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6210 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
6211 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
6213 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6214 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
6215 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6216 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
6217 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6218 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6219 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6220 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6223 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6224 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6225 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
6226 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
6227 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6228 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6229 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
6231 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6232 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
6233 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
6234 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6235 and range= options.</p>
6237 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6238 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6239 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6240 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6241 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
6242 to best handle this. I've noticed
6243 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
6244 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6245 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6246 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
6248 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6249 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
6250 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
6251 discussions instead of only
6252 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
6253 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
6254 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6255 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
6256 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
6257 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
6263 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
6268 <div class="padding
"></div>
6272 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
6278 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
6279 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6280 A few days ago the project
6281 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
6282 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
6283 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6290 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
6295 <div class="padding
"></div>
6299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html
">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
6305 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
6306 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6307 update in English.</p>
6309 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6310 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6311 of the British service
6312 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6313 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
6314 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6315 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
6316 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6317 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
6318 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6319 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6320 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
6321 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6322 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6323 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6324 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6326 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6327 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
6328 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6329 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
6330 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6331 public infrastructure.</p>
6333 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6340 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/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart
">kart</a>.
6345 <div class="padding
"></div>
6349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html
">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
6355 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6356 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
6357 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6358 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6359 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
6360 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
6361 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6362 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6363 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6364 out which security holes were present in our free software
6367 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6368 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6369 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
6370 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6371 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6372 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
6373 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6374 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
6375 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6376 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
6377 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
6378 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6379 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
6380 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6381 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6382 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6384 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6385 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6386 check out, one could look up
6387 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%
3A%
2Fa%
3Agnu%
3Agzip:
1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6388 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6389 The most recent one is
6390 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6391 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6392 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6394 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6395 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
6396 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6397 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
6398 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6399 security issues out.</p>
6401 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6402 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
6403 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
6405 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
6406 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6407 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6409 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6410 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6411 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
6412 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6413 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6414 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
6415 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6416 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
6417 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6418 established soon.</p>
6420 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6421 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6422 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6423 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6424 for their packages.</p>
6430 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/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
6435 <div class="padding
"></div>
6439 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html
">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
6446 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
6447 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6448 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6449 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
6450 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6451 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6452 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
6453 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6454 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
6455 one of my machines like this:</p>
6459 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6462 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6471 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6472 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6475 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6476 echo loaded pci modules:
6478 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6479 for address in * ; do
6480 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6481 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6482 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6483 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6484 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
6494 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6498 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6499 echo loaded usb modules:
6501 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6502 for address in * ; do
6503 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6504 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6505 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6506 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6507 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
6519 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6526 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>.
6531 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6535 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?
</a>
6541 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6542 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
6543 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
6544 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6545 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6546 the Wikipedia article on
6547 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
6548 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6549 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
6550 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6551 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6552 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6553 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6554 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6555 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6556 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6557 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6558 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
6560 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6561 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6562 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
6563 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
6564 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
6565 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6566 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6567 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
6568 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
6569 from last week
</a>.
</p>
6571 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
6572 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
6573 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6574 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
6575 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6576 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
6577 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
6579 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6581 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
6582 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
6583 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
6585 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6586 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6587 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
6588 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
6594 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
6599 <div class="padding
"></div>
6603 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html
">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video></a>
6609 <p>Today I discovered
6610 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
6611 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6612 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
6613 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
6614 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
6615 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
6616 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6617 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
6618 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
6619 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6620 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6621 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
6622 on the Google announcement is available from
6623 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
6626 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6627 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6628 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6629 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6630 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
6631 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
6632 browsers support H.264, and others support
6633 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
6634 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
6635 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
6636 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6637 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6638 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6639 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
6640 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
6642 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6643 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6644 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
6645 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
6646 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6647 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
6648 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
6650 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
6651 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
6652 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6653 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
6654 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
6655 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6656 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
6658 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6659 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6660 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
6661 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6662 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6663 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6664 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
6666 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
6667 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6668 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6669 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6670 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6671 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6672 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6673 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6674 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6675 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
6676 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6677 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6678 I guess time will tell.</p>
6680 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6681 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
6682 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
6688 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
6693 <div class="padding
"></div>
6697 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html
">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
6704 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
6706 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
6707 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6708 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6709 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6710 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6711 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
6712 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
6714 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6715 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
6716 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
6717 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6718 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6719 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6720 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
6722 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
6723 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
6729 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
6734 <div class="padding
"></div>
6738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
6744 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6745 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
6746 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6747 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
6748 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6749 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
6750 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6751 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
6753 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6754 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
6755 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6756 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
6757 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
6760 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6761 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
6762 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6763 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6764 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6765 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6766 specification on equal terms.</p>
6770 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6771 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6776 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6777 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6778 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6779 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
6781 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6782 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6783 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6786 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6787 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6790 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6795 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
6796 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
6797 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
6798 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6799 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
6800 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
6801 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
6805 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
6809 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
6812 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
6813 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
6815 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
6816 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
6822 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
6823 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
6827 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
6831 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
6832 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
6834 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
6835 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
6836 Standard themselves;
</li>
6838 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
6839 any party or in any business model;
</li>
6841 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
6842 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
6845 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
6846 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
6853 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
6855 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
6856 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
6859 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
6863 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
6868 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
6869 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
6870 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
6873 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
6874 method, can be changed through input from all
6877 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
6878 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
6880 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
6881 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
6883 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
6884 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
6885 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
6893 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
6896 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
6897 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
6898 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
6899 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
6900 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
6902 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
6903 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
6905 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
6906 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
6907 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
6908 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
6909 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
6910 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
6911 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
6912 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
6913 intended to function.
</li>
6915 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
6916 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
6917 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
6919 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
6920 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
6921 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
6922 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
6923 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
6924 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
6925 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
6926 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
6930 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
6931 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
6932 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
6934 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
6935 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
6936 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
6937 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
6939 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
6945 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
6946 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
6947 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
6953 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
6954 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
6955 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
6956 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
6957 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
6958 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
6959 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
6960 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
6967 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
6972 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6976 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?
</a>
6982 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
6983 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
6987 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
6992 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
6993 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
6994 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
6996 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6997 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6998 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7001 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7002 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7003 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
7005 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7006 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
7008 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
7012 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7013 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7014 products based on the standard.
</p>
7017 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7018 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
7019 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
7020 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7021 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
7022 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
7023 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7024 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
7026 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
7028 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7029 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
7030 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
7031 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7032 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7033 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
7034 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7035 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
7036 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7037 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7038 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
7039 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7040 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7041 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
7043 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
7045 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7046 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
7047 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
7048 documentation indicating this.
</p>
7051 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
7052 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
7053 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
7054 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
7055 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
7056 report is correct.
</p>
7058 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
7060 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
7061 container format
</a> and both the
7062 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
7063 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
7064 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7068 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7069 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7070 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7071 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7072 specification compliance.
7076 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7077 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
7078 this is the term:
<p>
7082 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7083 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7084 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7085 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7086 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7087 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
7088 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7089 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7090 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7091 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7092 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7093 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
7095 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7096 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
7099 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7100 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
7101 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7102 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
7103 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
7105 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
7107 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7109 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
7111 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
7112 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7113 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7114 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7115 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7116 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7117 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
7118 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
7120 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
7122 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
7124 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
7126 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
7127 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
7128 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7129 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7130 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7133 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7134 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
7140 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
7145 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7149 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru
</a>
7156 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
7157 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7159 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
7160 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
7161 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7162 Nothing very surprising there, given
7163 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
7164 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7165 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
7166 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
7167 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
7168 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7169 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
7170 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
7171 standard definition from its content.
</p>
7173 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7174 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7175 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7176 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
7177 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7178 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
7179 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
7180 background information about that story is available in
7181 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
7182 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
7185 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
7186 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
7187 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
7191 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March
25,
2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number
1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.
</p>
7193 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
</p>
7195 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.
</p>
7197 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
</p>
7201 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
7202 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
7203 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
7207 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
</p>
7209 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
</p>
7211 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
</p>
7213 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
</p>
7215 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
</p>
7218 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
7219 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
7220 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
7221 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
7222 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
7223 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
7227 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
</p>
7229 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
</p>
7231 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
7233 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "
1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."
</p>
7235 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.
</p>
7237 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No.
012-
2001-PCM).
</p>
7239 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.
</p>
7241 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.
</p>
7243 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.
</p>
7245 <p>To continue; you note that:"
2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."
</p>
7247 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."
</p>
7249 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.
</p>
7251 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.
</p>
7253 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.
</p>
7255 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
</p>
7257 <p>You add: "
3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."
</p>
7259 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph
6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.
</p>
7261 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.
</p>
7263 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.
</p>
7265 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
</p>
7267 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.
</p>
7269 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.
</p>
7271 <p>Your letter continues: "
4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."
</p>
7273 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.
</p>
7277 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.
</p>
7279 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.
</p>
7281 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.
</p>
7283 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
7285 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.
</p>
7287 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
7289 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on
27th September
2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of
3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).
</p>
7291 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."
</p>
7293 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).
</p>
7295 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.
</p>
7297 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.
</p>
7299 <p>You continue: "
6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only
8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other
92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."
</p>
7301 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph
5 and partly contradicts paragraph
3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only
8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.
</p>
7303 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph
3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.
</p>
7305 <p>You further state that: "
7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."
</p>
7307 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.
</p>
7309 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than
8% of the total.
</p>
7311 <p>You continue: "
8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."
</p>
7313 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.
</p>
7315 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.
</p>
7317 <p>You then say that: "
9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."
</p>
7319 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph
4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.
</p>
7321 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.
</p>
7323 <p>You continue by observing that: "
10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices
40 million US$/year, exports
4 million US$ (
10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."
</p>
7325 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.
</p>
7327 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.
</p>
7329 <p>You go on to say that: "
11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."
</p>
7331 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.
</p>
7333 <p>You then state that: "
12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."
</p>
7335 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.
</p>
7337 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "
13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"
</p>
7339 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.
</p>
7341 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
</p>
7343 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.
</p>
7345 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.
</p>
7348 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
7349 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
7356 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
7361 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7365 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
7371 <p>Half a year ago I
7372 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
7373 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
7374 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7375 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
7377 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7378 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7379 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
7380 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7381 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7382 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
7383 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
7389 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
7394 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7398 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux
</a>
7404 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
7405 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
7406 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
7407 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7408 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
7409 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
7410 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7411 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7414 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7415 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
7416 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7417 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
7418 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7419 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7420 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7421 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
7423 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
7424 I perform on a new model.
</p>
7428 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7429 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
7430 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
7432 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
7433 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
7435 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
7436 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7437 reported by the program.
</li>
7439 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7440 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
7441 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7442 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
7443 normally test this by playing
7444 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
7445 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
7447 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
7448 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
7450 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7451 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
7453 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
7454 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
7456 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7457 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
7460 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
7461 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7464 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
7465 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7468 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7469 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7470 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
7471 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7474 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7475 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7476 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7481 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7482 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
7483 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
7484 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7485 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
7486 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
7487 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7488 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
7494 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
7499 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7503 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
7509 <p>As I continue to explore
7510 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
7511 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7512 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
7514 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7515 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7516 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7517 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7518 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7519 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
7520 all transactions. There I can see that my address
7521 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
7522 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
7523 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
7524 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
7525 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
7526 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
7527 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7528 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7529 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7530 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
7531 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7532 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7533 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
7535 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7536 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7537 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7538 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7539 If the Skolelinux foundation
7540 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
7541 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7542 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7543 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7544 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
7545 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
7546 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7547 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
7549 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7550 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
7551 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7552 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7553 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
7554 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7555 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
7556 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7557 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7558 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7559 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
7560 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7561 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7562 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7565 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7566 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7567 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7568 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
7569 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7570 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7571 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7572 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
7574 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
7575 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
7576 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7577 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7580 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
7581 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
7582 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7583 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
7584 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
7590 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<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/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
7595 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7599 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money
</a>
7605 <p>With this weeks lawless
7606 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
7607 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
7608 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7609 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7610 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7612 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7613 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7614 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7615 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
7616 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7617 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7618 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
7620 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
7621 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7622 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7623 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7624 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
7625 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
7626 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7627 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
7628 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7629 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
7631 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7632 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7633 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7634 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
7635 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
7636 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7638 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
7639 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
7640 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
7641 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
7643 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7644 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7645 donations to the address
7646 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
7652 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<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/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
7657 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7661 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap
3D printer
</a>
7667 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
7668 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
7669 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
7670 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
7671 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
7672 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
7673 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
7674 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
7675 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
7676 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
7679 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
7680 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
7681 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
7682 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
7683 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
7684 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
7685 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
7691 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap
</a>.
7696 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7700 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK
</a>
7706 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7707 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
7708 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
7709 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
7710 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
7711 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
7713 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
7714 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
7716 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
7717 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
7718 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
7719 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
7726 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
7731 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7735 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
7741 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7742 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7743 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7744 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7745 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
7746 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7747 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7748 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
7750 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7751 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7752 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
7753 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7754 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7755 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
7756 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7757 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7758 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
7759 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7760 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
7762 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7763 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7764 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
7765 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7766 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
7767 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7768 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7769 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7770 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7771 what is going on.
</p>
7777 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
7782 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7786 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove
</a>
7792 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7793 upgrade testing of the
7794 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7795 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
7796 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7797 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
7799 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
7801 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7808 browser-plugin-gnash
7815 freedesktop-sound-theme
7817 gconf-defaults-service
7832 gnome-desktop-environment
7836 gnome-session-canberra
7841 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7847 libapache2-mod-dnssd
7850 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7853 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
7854 libboost-python1.42
.0
7855 libboost-thread1.42
.0
7857 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
7859 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
7866 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7881 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7886 libgtksourceview2.0-common
7887 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7888 libmono-addins0.2-cil
7889 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7890 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7891 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7892 libmono-posix2.0-cil
7893 libmono-security2.0-cil
7894 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7895 libmono-system2.0-cil
7898 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7899 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7909 libtelepathy-farsight0
7918 nautilus-sendto-empathy
7922 python-aptdaemon-gtk
7924 python-beautifulsoup
7939 python-gtksourceview2
7950 python-pkg-resources
7957 python-twisted-conch
7963 python-zope.interface
7968 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7975 system-config-printer-udev
7977 telepathy-mission-control-
5
7990 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7998 fast-user-switch-applet
8017 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
8019 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8025 system-config-printer
8032 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8035 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8038 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8044 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
8046 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8052 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8059 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8075 kdeartwork-emoticons
8077 kdeartwork-theme-icon
8081 kdebase-workspace-bin
8082 kdebase-workspace-data
8096 kscreensaver-xsavers
8111 plasma-dataengines-workspace
8113 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8114 plasma-runners-addons
8115 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8116 plasma-scriptengine-python
8117 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8118 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8119 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8120 plasma-scriptengines
8121 plasma-wallpapers-addons
8122 plasma-widget-folderview
8123 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8127 xscreensaver-data-extra
8129 xscreensaver-gl-extra
8130 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8133 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8137 google-gadgets-common
8155 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
8160 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8169 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8171 libplasmagenericshell4
8185 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
8186 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
8188 libsmokektexteditor3
8196 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
8202 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
8214 plasma-dataengines-addons
8215 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8216 plasma-widget-lancelot
8217 plasma-widgets-addons
8218 plasma-widgets-workspace
8222 update-notifier-common
8225 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8226 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8227 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8228 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
8234 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
8239 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8243 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images
</a>
8249 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8250 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
8251 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
8252 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8253 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
8254 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8255 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8256 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
8257 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
8260 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8261 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8262 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8263 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8264 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
8265 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
8271 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8276 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
8277 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
8283 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8284 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8288 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
8289 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8290 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8291 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8294 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8295 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8297 parted $img mklabel msdos
8298 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
8299 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8300 parted $img set
1 boot on
8303 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8304 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8306 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
8307 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8308 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8310 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8311 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8314 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8315 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
8317 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8318 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
8319 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
8320 seem to work just fine.
</p>
8326 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
8331 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8335 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop
</a>
8341 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8342 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8343 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8344 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
8346 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8347 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8348 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
8350 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
8352 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8355 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8356 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
8357 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8358 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8359 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8360 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8361 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8362 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8363 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8364 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8365 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8366 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8367 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8368 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8369 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
8370 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
8371 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
8372 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
8373 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8374 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8375 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
8376 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8377 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8378 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8379 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8380 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8381 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8382 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8383 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8384 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
8385 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
8386 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8387 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8388 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
8389 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
8390 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8391 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8392 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8393 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
8394 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8395 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8396 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8397 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8398 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8399 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8400 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8401 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8402 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8403 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8404 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8405 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8406 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8407 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8408 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8409 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8410 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8411 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8412 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8416 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8419 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8420 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8421 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8422 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8423 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8424 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8425 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8426 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
8427 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8428 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
8429 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8430 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8431 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
8432 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
8433 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
8434 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
8435 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8436 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8437 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8438 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8439 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
8440 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
8441 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
8442 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
8443 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8444 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8445 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8446 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8447 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8450 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8453 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8456 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8462 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
8464 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8467 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
8468 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8469 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8470 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8471 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8472 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8473 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8474 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8475 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8476 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8477 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8478 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8479 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8480 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8481 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
8482 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8483 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8484 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8485 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8486 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8487 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8488 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8489 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8490 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8491 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8492 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8493 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8494 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8495 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8499 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8502 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8503 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8504 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8505 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8506 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8507 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8508 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8509 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8510 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8511 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8512 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8513 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8514 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8515 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8516 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8517 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8518 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
8519 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8520 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8521 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
8522 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8523 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8524 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8525 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8526 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8527 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8528 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8529 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
8530 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
8531 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8532 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8533 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8534 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8537 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8540 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8541 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8542 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8543 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8544 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8545 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8546 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8549 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8552 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8559 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
8564 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8568 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
8575 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
8576 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
8577 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
8578 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8579 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8580 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8581 releases out more often.
</p>
8583 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8584 I have considered setting up a
<a
8585 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
8586 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8587 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
8588 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
8589 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8590 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8591 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8592 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
8593 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8594 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8595 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
8596 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
8602 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8607 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8611 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
8617 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
8619 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
8621 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
8622 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
8628 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8633 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8637 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
</a>
8643 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8644 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
8645 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8646 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
8647 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8648 working using this DVD.
</p>
8650 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8651 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
8652 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8653 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
8654 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
8655 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
8656 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
8658 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8659 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8660 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8663 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8664 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
8665 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
8666 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
8667 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8668 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
8669 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8670 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8671 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8672 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8673 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8674 free X driver should work.
</p>
8676 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8677 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8678 DVD more useful again.
</p>
8684 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8689 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8693 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
8699 <p>Some updates.
</p>
8701 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
8702 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
8703 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
8704 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8705 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
8708 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8709 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8710 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8712 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
8713 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
8714 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8715 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8716 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8717 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
8719 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
8720 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
8721 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
8722 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8723 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
8724 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8725 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8726 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
8727 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8728 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
8734 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
8739 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8743 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support
</a>
8749 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
8750 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8751 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8752 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8753 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8754 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
8756 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8757 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
8762 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8763 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
8765 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
8767 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
8769 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8770 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8771 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8772 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8773 days. The project web page is available from
8774 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8775 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8776 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
8778 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8779 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8780 to get this to happen.
</p>
8782 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8783 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
8787 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
8788 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
8789 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
8796 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
8801 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8805 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot
</a>
8811 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
8812 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
8813 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
8814 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
8815 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
8816 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
8819 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
8820 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
8821 a few less important features too.
</p>
8823 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
8824 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
8825 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
8826 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
8828 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
8829 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
8830 source or binary package:
</p>
8833 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.tar.gz
</a></li>
8834 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.dsc
</a></li>
8835 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1_all.deb
</a></li>
8838 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
8839 please let me know.
</p>
8845 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
8850 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8854 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
8862 <li><a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
8863 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
8865 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
8866 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
8867 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
8869 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
8870 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
8871 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
8880 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
8885 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8889 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS
130 digital camera
</a>
8895 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
8896 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
8897 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
8898 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
8899 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
8900 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
8901 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
8902 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
8903 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
8905 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
8909 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
8910 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
8911 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
8912 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
8913 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
8915 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
8919 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
8920 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
8921 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
8922 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
8924 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
8926 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
8927 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
8928 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
8929 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
8930 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
8931 the issue. The solution is to support the
8932 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
8933 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
8934 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
8940 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling
">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
8945 <div class="padding
"></div>
8949 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html
">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
8955 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
8956 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
8957 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
8958 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
8959 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
8960 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
8963 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
8964 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
8965 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
8966 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
8967 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
8968 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
8969 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
8970 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
8971 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
8973 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
8974 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
8975 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
8976 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
8977 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
8978 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
8979 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
8980 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
8981 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
8982 pages they want to visit.</p>
8984 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
8985 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
8986 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
8987 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
8988 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
8989 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
8990 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
8991 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
8992 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
8993 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
8994 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9000 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <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/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
9005 <div class="padding
"></div>
9009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html
">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
9015 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
9016 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9017 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9018 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9019 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9020 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
9021 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9022 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9023 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9024 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9025 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9028 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9029 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
9033 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9034 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9035 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
9036 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
9048 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9049 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9050 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
9051 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9052 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
9053 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
9054 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
9055 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
9056 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
9059 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
9060 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
9061 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
9062 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
9068 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
9073 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9077 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
9083 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
9084 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
9085 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
9086 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
9087 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
9088 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
9089 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
9093 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
9097 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
9098 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
9099 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
9100 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
9101 nevertheless. :)
</p>
9103 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
9105 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
9111 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9116 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9120 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
9126 <p>My file system sematics program
9127 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
9128 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
9129 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
9130 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
9131 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
9132 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
9133 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
9134 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
9135 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
9139 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
9141 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
9144 struct stat statbuf;
9145 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
9146 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
9153 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9154 int test_umask(void) {
9155 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
9157 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
9159 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9160 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
9164 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9165 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
9173 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9180 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
9183 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9184 info: testing symlink creation
9185 info: testing subdirectory creation
9186 info: testing fcntl locking
9187 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9188 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9189 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9190 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9191 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9192 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9193 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9196 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9200 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9201 info: testing symlink creation
9202 info: testing subdirectory creation
9203 info: testing fcntl locking
9204 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9205 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9206 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9207 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9208 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9209 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9210 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9211 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
9212 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
9215 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9216 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9219 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
9220 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
9222 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9223 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9224 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
9230 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9235 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9239 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
9245 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9246 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
9247 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9248 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9249 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9256 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
9261 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9265 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
9271 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9272 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9273 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
9274 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9275 generated configuration.
</p>
9277 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
9278 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9279 without any manual configuration.
</p>
9281 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9282 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
9283 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9284 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9285 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9286 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
9287 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9288 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
9289 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
9290 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9291 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9292 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9293 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
9294 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9295 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9296 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
9299 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
9300 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9301 working properly out of the box:
</p>
9304 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
9305 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
9306 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
9307 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
9308 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
9309 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
9310 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
9313 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
9315 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
9316 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
9317 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
9318 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
9319 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
9321 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
9322 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
9323 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
9324 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
9325 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
9326 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
9327 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
9328 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
9330 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
9331 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
9332 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
9333 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
9334 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
9335 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
9336 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
9337 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
9338 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
9339 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
9340 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
9341 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
9342 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
9343 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
9344 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
9345 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
9347 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
9348 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
9349 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
9350 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
9351 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
9352 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
9353 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
9354 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
9355 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
9356 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
9357 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
9358 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
9359 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
9361 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9362 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
9363 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9364 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
9365 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
9366 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9367 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9368 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
9369 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
9370 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9373 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9374 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9375 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
9376 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9377 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9380 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9381 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9383 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9384 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9385 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
9386 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
9392 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9397 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9401 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...
</a>
9407 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9408 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9409 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
9410 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9411 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9412 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
9413 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
9415 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9416 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9417 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9418 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
9419 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9420 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9421 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
9423 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9424 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9425 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9426 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9427 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
9431 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
9432 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9434 * License: GPL v2 or later
9436 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9437 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9440 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
9441 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
9442 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
9444 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9446 #include
<errno.h
>
9447 #include
<fcntl.h
>
9448 #include
<stdio.h
>
9449 #include
<string.h
>
9450 #include
<stdlib.h
>
9451 #include
<sys/file.h
>
9452 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
9453 #include
<sys/types.h
>
9454 #include
<unistd.h
>
9458 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9459 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
9461 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
9463 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
9464 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
9465 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
9466 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9468 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9471 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
9473 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9479 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
9480 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9481 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
9485 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
9489 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9492 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
9493 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
9494 * done in the sqlite3 library.
9496 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
9497 * POSIX specification
9498 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
9500 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9502 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9504 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
9505 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
9507 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9508 fl.l_pid = getpid();
9509 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9510 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9512 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
9513 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9515 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
9516 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
9518 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
9519 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9521 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9522 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9524 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
9525 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9527 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9528 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9530 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
9531 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9533 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
9534 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
9536 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9538 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
9539 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9541 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
9542 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9549 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9550 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9551 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
9552 * slowing down file operations.
9554 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9556 char *path = strdup("test");
9559 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
9560 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
9561 char *newpath = NULL;
9562 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
9563 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
9564 path, strerror(errno));
9567 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
9575 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
9578 int test_symlinks(void) {
9579 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
9581 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
9582 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
9586 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9587 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
9589 test_subdirectory_creation();
9592 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9593 test_gcompris_locking();
9598 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
9602 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9603 info: testing symlink creation
9604 info: testing subdirectory creation
9606 info: testing fcntl locking
9607 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9608 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9609 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9610 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9611 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9612 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9615 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9616 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9617 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9618 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
9619 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9620 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9621 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9622 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
9624 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9627 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9628 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9629 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
9635 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9640 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9644 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu
</a>
9650 <p>A few days ago, I
9651 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
9652 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9653 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9654 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9655 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9656 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9657 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9658 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9659 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
9661 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9662 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9663 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9664 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
9665 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
9666 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9667 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
9668 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9669 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9670 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
9671 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9672 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
9673 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9674 gave it a IP address.
</p>
9676 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9677 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
9678 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9679 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9680 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9681 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
9682 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9683 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
9685 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
9686 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9687 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9688 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
9689 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9690 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
9692 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9693 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9694 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9695 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
9696 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9697 with UID and GID values.
</p>
9699 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9700 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9706 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9711 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9715 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo
</a>
9721 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9722 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9723 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9724 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9725 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9726 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9729 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9730 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9731 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9732 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9733 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9734 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9735 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9738 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9739 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9740 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9741 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9742 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9743 university servers.
</p>
9745 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9746 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9747 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9748 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9749 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9756 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9761 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9765 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
9771 <p>I discovered this while doing
9772 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9773 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
9774 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9775 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9776 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
9778 <p>An example is from todays
9779 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9780 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9781 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
9782 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9783 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9784 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9785 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
9787 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
9790 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9791 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
9792 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
9793 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9794 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9797 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9798 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
9799 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9800 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9801 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9802 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9803 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9804 of dependency loops.
</p>
9807 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9808 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
9810 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9811 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
9813 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9814 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
9815 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
9816 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9817 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9824 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9829 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9833 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released
</a>
9839 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
9840 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
9844 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
9845 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
9846 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
9847 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
9848 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
9849 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
9850 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
9851 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
9853 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
9854 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
9855 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
9857 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
9858 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
9861 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
9864 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
9866 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
9867 combination with some new artwork
9868 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
9869 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
9870 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
9871 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
9872 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
9873 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
9874 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
9875 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
9876 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
9878 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
9884 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
9887 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
9888 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
9889 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
9890 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
9891 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
9893 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
9896 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
9897 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
9899 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
9900 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
9901 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
9902 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
9903 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
9904 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
9905 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
9906 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
9907 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
9908 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
9909 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
9910 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
9911 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
9912 and help out with translations.
</li>
9915 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
9918 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
9919 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
9920 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9922 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
9925 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
9926 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
9927 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9930 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
9931 get closer to the final release.
</p>
9933 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
9936 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9937 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9940 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
9942 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9943 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9945 <p>How to report bugs:
9946 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
9948 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
9955 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9960 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9964 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu
</a>
9970 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
9971 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
9972 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
9973 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
9974 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
9976 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
9977 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
9978 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
9979 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
9980 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
9981 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
9982 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
9984 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
9985 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
9986 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
9987 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
9990 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
9991 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
9992 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
9994 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
9995 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
9996 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
9997 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
9998 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
9999 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10000 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10001 release another day.
</p>
10003 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10004 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10010 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/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
10015 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10017 <div class=
"entry">
10018 <div class=
"title">
10019 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page
</a>
10026 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
10027 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
10028 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10029 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
10030 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
10031 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10032 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
10034 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10035 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
10036 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10037 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10038 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10039 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10040 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
10046 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
10051 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10053 <div class=
"entry">
10054 <div class=
"title">
10055 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP
</a>
10062 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
10064 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
10066 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10067 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
10069 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10070 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10071 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
10072 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
10074 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10075 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10076 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
10078 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
10080 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10081 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10084 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10085 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10086 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10087 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10088 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10089 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
10091 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10092 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10093 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10094 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10095 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10096 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
10097 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10098 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10099 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10100 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10101 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10102 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
10103 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10104 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10105 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
10106 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
10109 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10110 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10111 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10112 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10113 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10114 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10115 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10117 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10118 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10119 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10120 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10121 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10122 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10123 </pre></blockquote>
10125 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10126 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10127 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
10128 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10132 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10134 objectclass: dnsdomain
10135 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10138 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10140 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10142 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10143 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10145 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10146 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10147 </pre></blockquote>
10149 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
10150 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
10151 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10152 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10153 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10154 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10155 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
10156 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
10157 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10158 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10159 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10162 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10166 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10167 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10168 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10169 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10170 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10171 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10173 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10174 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10175 </pre></blockquote>
10177 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10178 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10179 reverse lookups.
</p>
10181 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10182 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10183 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
10184 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
10186 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
10187 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
10188 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
10190 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10191 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10192 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
10193 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10194 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
10196 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10197 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10198 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10199 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10200 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
10202 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10203 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10204 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10205 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10206 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10207 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
10210 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10213 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10214 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10215 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10216 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10217 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10219 </pre></blockquote>
10221 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10222 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10223 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10224 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10225 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10226 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
10228 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
10230 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10231 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
10232 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10233 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10234 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
10236 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10237 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10238 stored. These are the relevant entries from
10239 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
10242 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10243 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10244 </pre></blockquote>
10246 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10247 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10248 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
10249 search result is this entry:
</p>
10252 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10255 objectClass: dhcpServer
10256 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10257 </pre></blockquote>
10259 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10260 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
10261 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10262 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10263 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10264 The search result is this entry:
</p>
10267 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10270 objectClass: dhcpService
10271 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10272 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10273 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10274 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10275 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
10276 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
10277 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
10278 </pre></blockquote>
10280 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
10281 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10282 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10283 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10284 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
10285 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
10286 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10287 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10288 related computer objects.
</p>
10290 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10291 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
10292 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10293 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10294 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
10298 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10301 objectClass: dhcpHost
10302 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10303 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10304 </pre></blockquote>
10306 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10307 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10308 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
10309 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10310 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
10311 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10312 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10313 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10314 structural object class.
10316 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
10318 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10319 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10320 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10321 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10322 in the configuration.
</p>
10324 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10325 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10326 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10327 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10328 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10331 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10332 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
10336 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10337 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10338 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10339 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10340 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10341 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10342 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10343 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10344 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10345 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10346 </pre></blockquote>
10348 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10349 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10350 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10351 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
10353 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10357 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10360 objectClass: dhcpHost
10361 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10362 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10363 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10364 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10365 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10366 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10367 </pre></blockquote>
10369 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10370 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10371 auxiliary object class.
</p>
10377 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10382 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10384 <div class=
"entry">
10385 <div class=
"title">
10386 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
10392 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10393 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10394 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10395 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10396 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
10398 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10399 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
10401 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10402 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
10403 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10404 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10405 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10406 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
10408 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10409 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10410 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10411 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10412 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
10415 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10416 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10417 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
10421 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10423 objectClass: dhcphost
10424 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10425 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10426 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10427 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10428 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10429 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10431 </pre></blockquote>
10433 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10434 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10435 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
10436 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
10438 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10439 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10440 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10441 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10442 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10443 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10444 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10445 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
10447 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10448 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10454 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10459 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10461 <div class=
"entry">
10462 <div class=
"title">
10463 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
10469 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10470 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10471 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10472 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
10474 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10475 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
10476 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10477 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10480 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10481 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10482 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
10484 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10485 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10486 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
10489 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10491 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10493 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10494 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10495 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10497 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10498 # existence of attribute names.
10500 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10501 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10502 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10504 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10505 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
10507 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10510 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10512 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10513 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10514 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10515 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
10516 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10517 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10518 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10519 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10520 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10521 # bass value on to clients
10522 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10526 </pre></blockquote>
10528 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10529 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10530 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10531 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10532 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
10534 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10535 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10537 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10538 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
10539 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10540 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
10541 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
10542 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
10548 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10553 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10555 <div class=
"entry">
10556 <div class=
"title">
10557 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10564 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10565 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10566 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
10567 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
10568 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10569 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
10570 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10571 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
10572 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10573 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
10574 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
10575 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10576 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
10582 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10587 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10589 <div class=
"entry">
10590 <div class=
"title">
10591 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop
</a>
10597 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
10598 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10599 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
10600 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
10601 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10602 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10603 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
10604 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
10606 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10607 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
10608 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
10609 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10610 publish the difference.
</p>
10612 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10615 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10616 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
10617 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10618 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10619 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10620 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10621 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10622 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10625 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
10628 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10629 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10630 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
10631 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10632 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
10633 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
10634 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10635 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
10636 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
10637 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
10638 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10639 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
10640 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10641 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
10642 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10643 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
10644 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
10645 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10646 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10647 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10650 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
10653 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10654 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10655 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10656 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10657 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10658 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10659 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10660 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10661 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10662 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10663 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10664 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10665 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10666 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10667 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10668 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10669 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10670 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10671 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10672 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10673 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10676 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
10679 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10680 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10681 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10684 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10685 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10686 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10687 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10688 the difference somewhat.
10694 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
10699 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10701 <div class=
"entry">
10702 <div class=
"title">
10703 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop
</a>
10709 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10710 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10711 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10712 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10713 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10714 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10715 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10716 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10717 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
10719 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
10721 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
10722 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
10723 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
10724 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
10725 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10726 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
10727 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10728 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10729 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10730 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10731 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
10732 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10733 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10734 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
10735 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
10737 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
10740 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10741 </pre></blockquote>
10743 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10744 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
10745 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10746 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
10747 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10748 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10749 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10750 on how to get this working.
</p>
10752 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10753 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
10754 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10755 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
10756 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10757 instructions I found in the
10758 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
10759 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
10763 reload-count unlimited
10766 enable-cache passwd yes
10767 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
10768 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
10769 suggested-size passwd
211
10770 check-files passwd yes
10771 persistent passwd yes
10773 max-db-size passwd
33554432
10774 auto-propagate passwd yes
10776 enable-cache group yes
10777 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
10778 negative-time-to-live group
20
10779 suggested-size group
211
10780 check-files group yes
10781 persistent group yes
10783 max-db-size group
33554432
10784 auto-propagate group yes
10786 enable-cache hosts no
10787 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
10788 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
10789 suggested-size hosts
211
10790 check-files hosts yes
10791 persistent hosts yes
10793 max-db-size hosts
33554432
10795 enable-cache services yes
10796 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
10797 negative-time-to-live services
20
10798 suggested-size services
211
10799 check-files services yes
10800 persistent services yes
10801 shared services yes
10802 max-db-size services
33554432
10803 </pre></blockquote>
10805 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
10806 automatically like the one provided in
10807 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
10808 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
10809 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
10810 look like this:
</p>
10816 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
10822 netgroup: files ldap
10823 </pre></blockquote>
10825 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
10826 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
10828 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
10829 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
10830 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
10833 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
10834 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
10836 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
10837 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
10838 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
10839 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
10840 discovered sssd.
</p>
10842 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
10844 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
10845 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
10846 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
10847 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
10848 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
10849 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
10850 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
10851 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
10852 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
10853 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
10854 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
10855 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
10856 version
1.2 is now in testing.
10858 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
10859 roaming setup I want
</p>
10862 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
10863 </pre></blockquote>
10865 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
10866 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
10870 config_file_version =
2
10871 reconnection_retries =
3
10873 services = nss, pam
10877 filter_groups = root
10878 filter_users = root
10879 reconnection_retries =
3
10882 reconnection_retries =
3
10886 cache_credentials = true
10889 auth_provider = ldap
10890 chpass_provider = ldap
10892 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
10893 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10894 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
10895 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
10896 </pre></blockquote>
10898 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
10899 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
10901 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
10902 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
10903 modify it manually.
</p>
10905 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10906 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10912 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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10917 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10919 <div class=
"entry">
10920 <div class=
"title">
10921 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10927 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10928 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10929 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
10930 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10931 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
10932 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10933 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
10934 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10935 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
10936 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
10938 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10939 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10940 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10941 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10944 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
10945 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10946 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
10947 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
10949 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10950 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10952 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10953 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
10954 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10955 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
10956 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
10962 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
10967 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10969 <div class=
"entry">
10970 <div class=
"title">
10971 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object
</a>
10978 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10979 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10980 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10981 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
10983 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10984 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10985 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10986 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
10988 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10989 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10990 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10993 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10995 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10996 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10997 available today from IETF.
</p>
11000 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
11001 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
11002 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
11003 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11005 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11007 + SUP top AUXILIARY
11009 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11010 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11013 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11014 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11015 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
11017 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11018 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11024 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11029 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11031 <div class=
"entry">
11032 <div class=
"title">
11033 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output
</a>
11039 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11040 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
11041 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11042 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11043 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11047 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11048 tasksel --new-install
11049 </pre></blockquote>
11051 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11052 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11053 any output what so ever.
11055 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11056 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11057 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11058 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11059 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11060 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
11064 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11065 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11067 </pre></blockquote>
11069 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
11070 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11071 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11072 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11073 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11074 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11077 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11078 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11085 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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
11090 <div class="padding
"></div>
11092 <div class="entry
">
11093 <div class="title
">
11094 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
11100 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
11101 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
11102 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
11103 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
11106 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
11107 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
11108 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
11109 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
11110 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
11111 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
11112 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
11113 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
11114 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
11115 see how the project is doing.</p>
11117 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
11118 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
11119 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
11120 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
11121 Windows. This is great.</p>
11127 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
11132 <div class="padding
"></div>
11134 <div class="entry
">
11135 <div class="title
">
11136 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html
">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
11143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
11144 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11145 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11146 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11147 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11148 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
11149 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11151 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11152 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
11153 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11154 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11155 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11156 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11157 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11158 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11160 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11161 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11162 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11163 too surprising.</p>
11165 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11166 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
11167 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
11168 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11169 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11170 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
11171 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11174 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11175 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11176 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11177 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11178 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11179 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11180 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11181 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11182 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11183 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11184 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11185 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11186 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11187 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11188 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11189 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11190 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11191 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11192 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11193 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11194 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11195 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11196 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11197 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11198 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11199 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11200 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11201 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11202 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11203 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11205 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11207 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11208 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11209 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11210 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11211 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11212 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11213 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11214 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11215 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11216 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11217 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11218 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11219 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11220 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11221 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11222 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11223 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11224 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11225 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11226 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11227 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11228 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11229 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11230 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11231 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11232 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11233 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11234 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11235 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11236 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11237 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11240 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11242 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11243 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11244 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11245 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11246 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11247 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11248 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11249 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11250 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11251 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11252 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11253 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11254 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11255 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11256 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11257 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11258 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11259 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11260 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11261 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11262 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11263 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11264 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11265 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11266 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11267 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11268 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11269 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11271 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11272 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11273 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11274 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11275 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11276 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11277 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11278 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11279 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11280 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11281 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11282 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11283 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11284 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11285 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11286 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11287 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11288 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11289 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11290 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11291 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11292 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11293 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11294 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11295 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11296 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11297 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11298 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11299 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11300 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11301 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11302 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11303 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11304 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11305 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11306 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11307 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11315 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <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>.
11320 <div class="padding
"></div>
11322 <div class="entry
">
11323 <div class="title
">
11324 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11330 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11331 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
11332 have been discovered and reported in the process
11333 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11334 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11335 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
11336 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11337 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11339 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11340 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11341 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11342 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11343 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11344 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11346 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11347 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11348 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11349 is created. The bug report
11350 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11351 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11352 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
11353 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11354 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
11355 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
11356 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11357 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11358 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
11359 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11360 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11361 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11362 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11364 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
11365 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11381 exec
< /dev/null
11383 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11384 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11386 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11387 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11388 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
11392 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11394 umount $tmpdir/proc
11396 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11397 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11398 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11400 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11402 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
11403 # to return the correct answers.
11404 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11405 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11407 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11408 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11409 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
11413 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11416 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11417 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11418 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11419 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11421 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11422 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11423 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11424 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11426 </pre></blockquote>
11428 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11429 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11430 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11431 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
11432 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11433 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
11435 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11436 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11437 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
11438 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
11439 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11440 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
11441 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
11443 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11444 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11445 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11446 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11447 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11454 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
11459 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11461 <div class=
"entry">
11462 <div class=
"title">
11463 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it
</a>
11469 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11470 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11471 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
11472 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11473 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
11474 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11475 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
11477 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11478 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11487 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11489 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11490 </pre></blockquote>
11492 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11496 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
11501 </pre></blockquote>
11503 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11504 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
11505 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
11507 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11508 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11515 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11520 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11522 <div class=
"entry">
11523 <div class=
"title">
11524 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
11531 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11532 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11533 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11534 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
11535 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
11541 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/standard">standard
</a>.
11546 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11548 <div class=
"entry">
11549 <div class=
"title">
11550 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site
</a>
11556 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11557 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11558 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
11559 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11560 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
11563 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11565 Dell Computer Corporation
1
11568 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
11572 </pre></blockquote>
11574 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11575 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
11576 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11577 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
11578 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
11580 <p>A larger list is
11581 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11582 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11583 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
11584 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11585 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11586 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11593 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
11598 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11600 <div class=
"entry">
11601 <div class=
"title">
11602 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?
</a>
11608 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11609 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
11610 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11611 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11614 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11615 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
11616 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11617 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11618 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
11619 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
11621 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11622 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11623 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
11624 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11625 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11626 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11627 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
11628 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
11630 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
11636 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
11641 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11643 <div class=
"entry">
11644 <div class=
"title">
11645 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing
</a>
11651 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11652 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11653 issues are known and should be solved:
11657 <li>The wicd package seen to
11658 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
11659 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
11660 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11661 seem to be on the case.
</li>
11663 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11664 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
11665 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
11666 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
11668 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11669 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11670 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
11671 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11672 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11673 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11674 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11675 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
11679 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11680 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
11681 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11682 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
11684 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11685 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11686 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11687 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11689 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
11695 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
11700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11702 <div class=
"entry">
11703 <div class=
"title">
11704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
11710 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11711 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
11712 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11713 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
11715 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
11716 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11717 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
11718 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11719 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11720 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11721 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
11722 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11723 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
11724 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11725 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11726 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11727 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11730 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11731 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11732 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11733 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11734 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
11735 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11736 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
11737 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11738 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11739 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11742 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11743 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11744 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11745 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
11746 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11747 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
11749 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11750 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11756 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
11761 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11763 <div class=
"entry">
11764 <div class=
"title">
11765 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian
</a>
11771 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11772 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
11773 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
11774 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11776 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
11777 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11778 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
11779 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
11780 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
11781 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
11782 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
11784 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11785 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11786 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11787 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11788 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
11789 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11790 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11791 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
11793 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11794 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11795 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
11796 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11797 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11798 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11799 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
11801 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11802 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11803 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11804 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
11805 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
11806 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
11807 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
11808 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
11809 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
11810 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
11811 on the home directory servers.
</p>
11813 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
11814 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
11815 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
11816 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
11817 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
11818 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
11820 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11821 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11827 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11832 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11834 <div class=
"entry">
11835 <div class=
"title">
11836 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable
</a>
11842 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11843 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11844 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11845 expected, if I am to believe the
11846 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11847 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11848 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11849 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
11850 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11851 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11854 More information about
11855 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11856 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
11857 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11858 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11862 </pre></blockquote>
11864 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11865 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11866 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11867 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11873 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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>.
11878 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11880 <div class=
"entry">
11881 <div class=
"title">
11882 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients
</a>
11888 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11889 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
11890 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11891 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11892 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
11893 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11894 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
11895 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
11897 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11898 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
11899 this on the collector host:
</p>
11902 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
11903 </pre></blockquote>
11905 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11906 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
11908 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11909 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11910 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11911 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
11918 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
11923 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11925 <div class=
"entry">
11926 <div class=
"title">
11927 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
11933 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
11934 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
11936 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
11938 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
11939 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11940 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
11941 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11942 based boot system. Tollef is
11943 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
11944 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
11945 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11946 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11947 at the moment do not.
</p>
11949 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11950 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11951 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
11952 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11953 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11956 <p>In the mean time, based on the
11957 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11958 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11959 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11960 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11961 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
11962 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11963 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11964 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
11970 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11975 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11977 <div class=
"entry">
11978 <div class=
"title">
11979 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing
</a>
11985 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11986 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11987 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
11988 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11989 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11990 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
11991 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11994 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11995 </pre></blockquote>
11997 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11998 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11999 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12000 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
12001 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12002 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12003 make this happen.
</p>
12005 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
12006 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12007 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12008 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
12009 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
12011 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12012 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
12013 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
12014 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
12016 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12017 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12018 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12019 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
12025 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12030 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12032 <div class=
"entry">
12033 <div class=
"title">
12034 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login
</a>
12040 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
12041 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
12042 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
12044 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
12045 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
12046 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
12047 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
12048 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
12050 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
12051 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
12054 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12055 Last password change : May
02,
2010
12056 Password expires : never
12057 Password inactive : never
12058 Account expires : never
12059 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
12060 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
12061 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
12063 </pre></blockquote>
12065 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
12066 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
12067 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
12068 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
12069 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
12070 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
12072 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
12076 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
12077 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12078 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
12079 Password expires : never
12080 Password inactive : never
12081 Account expires : never
12082 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
12083 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
12084 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
12086 </pre></blockquote>
12088 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
12089 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
12090 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
12092 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
12093 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
12095 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
12096 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12098 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
12099 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
12100 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
12101 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
12102 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
12103 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
12104 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
12106 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
12107 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
12108 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
12115 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/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12120 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12122 <div class=
"entry">
12123 <div class=
"title">
12124 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu
</a>
12130 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
12131 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
12132 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
12135 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
12136 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
12137 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
12138 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
12142 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
12143 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
12144 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
12145 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
12146 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
12147 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
12148 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
12149 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
12150 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
12151 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
12152 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
12153 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
12155 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
12156 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
12157 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
12158 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
12159 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
12160 or the Fedora developed
12161 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
12162 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
12164 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
12165 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
12166 directory, using unison.
</li>
12168 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
12169 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
12170 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
12171 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
12174 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
12175 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
12177 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
12178 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
12179 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
12183 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
12184 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
12185 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
12186 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
12187 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
12188 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
12189 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
12190 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
12191 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
12193 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12194 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12200 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12205 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12207 <div class=
"entry">
12208 <div class=
"title">
12209 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"
</a>
12215 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
12216 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
12217 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
12218 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
12219 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
12220 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
12221 restrictions on the web, for example from
12222 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
12224 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
12225 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
12226 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
12232 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
12237 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12239 <div class=
"entry">
12240 <div class=
"title">
12241 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
12247 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
12248 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
12249 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
12250 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
12251 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
12252 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
12253 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
12254 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
12255 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
12257 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
12258 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
12259 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
12260 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
12261 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
12263 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
12264 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
12266 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
12267 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
12268 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
12269 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
12270 to work properly.
</p>
12272 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
12273 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
12274 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
12275 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
12276 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
12279 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
12280 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
12281 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
12282 up in a few days.
</p>
12288 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12293 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12295 <div class=
"entry">
12296 <div class=
"title">
12297 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After
6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented
</a>
12303 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
12304 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
12305 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
12306 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
12307 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
12308 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
12310 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
12311 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
12312 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
12313 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
12315 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
12316 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
12317 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
12318 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
12319 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
12320 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
12326 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12331 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12333 <div class=
"entry">
12334 <div class=
"title">
12335 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues
</a>
12341 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
12342 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
12343 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
12344 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
12345 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
12346 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
12347 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
12349 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
12351 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
12352 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
12353 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
12354 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
12360 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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12365 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12367 <div class=
"entry">
12368 <div class=
"title">
12369 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
12375 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
12376 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
12377 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
12378 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
12379 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
12382 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
12383 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
12384 configured to be a server for the
12385 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
12386 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
12387 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
12388 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
12389 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
12390 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
12391 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
12392 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
12393 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
12394 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
12396 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
12397 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
12398 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
12399 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
12401 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
12402 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
12403 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
12404 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
12405 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
12406 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
12409 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
12410 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
12411 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
12412 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
12414 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
12415 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
12416 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
12417 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
12418 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
12419 everything is taken care of.</p>
12425 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/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary
">sitesummary</a>.
12430 <div class="padding
"></div>
12432 <div class="entry
">
12433 <div class="title
">
12434 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html
">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
12440 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
12441 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
12442 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
12443 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
12446 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12447 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12448 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
12449 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
12452 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
12453 got these numbers:</p>
12456 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12457 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
12458 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
12459 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
12462 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
12464 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
12465 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
12466 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
12467 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
12468 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
12472 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12473 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12474 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
12475 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
12478 <p>And with 'site:no':
12481 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12482 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
12483 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
12484 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
12487 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
12494 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
12499 <div class="padding
"></div>
12501 <div class="entry
">
12502 <div class="title
">
12503 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
12510 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
12511 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
12512 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
12513 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
12514 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
12515 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
12516 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
12517 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
12518 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
12519 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
12521 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
12522 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
12523 seminar this autumn.</p>
12529 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
12534 <div class="padding
"></div>
12536 <div class="entry
">
12537 <div class="title
">
12538 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html
">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
12544 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12545 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12546 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
12547 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12548 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12549 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12550 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12552 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12553 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12554 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12560 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
12565 <div class="padding
"></div>
12567 <div class="entry
">
12568 <div class="title
">
12569 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12575 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12576 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12577 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
12578 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12579 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12580 the package up to date.</p>
12582 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12583 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
12584 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12585 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12586 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12587 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
12588 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12589 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
12590 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
12591 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12592 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12593 working on the future release.</p>
12595 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12596 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12602 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
12607 <div class="padding
"></div>
12609 <div class="entry
">
12610 <div class="title
">
12611 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12617 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12618 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12619 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
12621 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
12622 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
12623 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12624 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12625 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12626 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
12628 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12629 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
12634 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12636 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12637 clock is in UTC.</li>
12639 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12640 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
12641 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12645 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12646 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
12649 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12650 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12651 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
12652 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12653 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12656 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12657 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12658 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12659 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12660 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
12661 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12662 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12668 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
12673 <div class="padding
"></div>
12675 <div class="entry
">
12676 <div class="title
">
12677 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html
">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
12683 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12684 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12685 do not yet know them.</p>
12687 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
12688 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12689 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12690 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
12691 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
12692 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12693 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12694 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12695 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
12696 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12697 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12699 <p>The second one is
12700 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
12701 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
12702 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
12703 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12704 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
12705 and the company behind it is running
12706 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
12707 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12708 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
12709 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12710 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12711 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
12712 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12713 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12715 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12716 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12717 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12718 surrounded by today.</p>
12724 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>.
12729 <div class="padding
"></div>
12731 <div class="entry
">
12732 <div class="title
">
12733 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html
">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
12740 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
12741 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
12742 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12743 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12744 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
12751 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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
12756 <div class="padding
"></div>
12758 <div class="entry
">
12759 <div class="title
">
12760 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
12766 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
12767 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
12768 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
12769 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
12770 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
12771 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
12772 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
12773 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
12775 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
12777 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
12778 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12779 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
12781 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
12782 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
12783 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
12784 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
12786 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
12787 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
12788 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
12789 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
12791 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
12796 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
12797 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12798 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
12802 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
12808 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
12813 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12815 <div class=
"entry">
12816 <div class=
"title">
12817 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications
</a>
12823 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12824 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
12825 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12826 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12827 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12828 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12829 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12832 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12833 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
12834 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12835 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
12836 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12837 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12838 blocked from doing so.
</p>
12840 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12841 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12842 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12843 requirements change.
</p>
12845 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12846 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12847 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
12853 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/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
12858 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12860 <div class=
"entry">
12861 <div class=
"title">
12862 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
12868 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
12869 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
12870 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
12871 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
12872 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
12873 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
12874 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
12875 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
12876 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
12877 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
12878 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
12879 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
12880 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
12881 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
12888 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12893 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12895 <div class=
"entry">
12896 <div class=
"title">
12897 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC
2307?
</a>
12903 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
12904 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
12905 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
12906 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
12907 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
12908 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
12910 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
12911 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
12912 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
12913 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
12914 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
12915 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
12916 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
12917 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
12918 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
12919 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
12920 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
12921 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
12922 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
12924 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
12925 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
12926 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
12927 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
12929 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
12930 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
12932 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
12933 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
12934 new IETF work group?
</p>
12940 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
12945 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12947 <div class=
"entry">
12948 <div class=
"title">
12949 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers
</a>
12955 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
12956 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
12957 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
12958 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
12959 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
12960 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
12961 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
12962 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
12963 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
12964 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
12965 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
12966 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
12967 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
12968 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
12969 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
12970 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
12971 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
12972 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
12973 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
12974 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
12975 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
12976 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
12977 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
12978 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
12979 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
12982 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
12983 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
12984 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
12985 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
12986 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
12987 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
12988 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
12993 use WWW::Mechanize;
12996 sub get_support_info {
12997 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
13000 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
13001 # fetch website from Dell support
13002 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
13003 my $webpage = get($url);
13004 return undef unless ($webpage);
13007 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
13008 foreach my $line (@lines) {
13009 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
13010 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13011 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
13013 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
13014 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
13016 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
13017 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
13019 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13020 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13021 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13022 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
13023 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
13024 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
13025 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
13027 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13028 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13029 if ($lastend lt $today);
13031 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
13032 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
13034 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
13037 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
13038 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
13040 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
13041 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
13043 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
13044 fields =
> $fields );
13045 # Next step is screen scraping
13046 my $content = $mech-
>content();
13048 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13049 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13050 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13051 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13053 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13055 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
13056 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
13057 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
13058 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
13059 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13060 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13061 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13062 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
13064 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
13066 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13067 if ($end lt $today);
13069 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
13070 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
13071 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
13072 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
13074 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
13076 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13077 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13078 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13079 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13081 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
13082 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
13084 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
13086 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13087 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13088 if ($end lt $today);
13096 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
13097 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
13098 from dmidecode.
</p>
13101 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
13103 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
13104 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
13108 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
13109 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
13111 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
13112 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
13113 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
13120 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13125 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13127 <div class=
"entry">
13128 <div class=
"title">
13129 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
13135 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
13136 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
13137 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
13138 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
13139 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
13140 the "missing" computer.
</p>
13142 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
13143 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
13144 code blocks as defined in the
13145 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
13146 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
13147 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
13148 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
13149 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
13150 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
13151 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
13152 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
13155 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
13156 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
13157 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
13158 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
13159 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
13160 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
13162 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
13163 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
13164 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
13165 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
13166 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
13167 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
13168 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
13169 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
13170 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
13171 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
13173 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
13174 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
13175 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
13181 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13186 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13188 <div class=
"entry">
13189 <div class=
"title">
13190 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...
</a>
13196 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
13197 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
13198 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
13199 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
13200 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
13201 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
13202 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
13203 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
13204 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
13205 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
13206 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
13207 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
13208 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
13209 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
13211 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
13212 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
13213 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
13214 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
13215 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
13216 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
13217 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
13218 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
13219 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
13220 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
13221 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
13222 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
13223 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
13224 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
13225 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
13226 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
13227 playing when the download is done.
</p>
13229 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
13230 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
13231 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
13234 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
13235 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
13236 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
13237 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
13243 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
13248 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13250 <div class=
"entry">
13251 <div class=
"title">
13252 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
13258 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
13259 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
13260 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
13261 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
13262 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
13263 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
13264 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
13265 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
13266 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
13267 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
13268 source, sink and mixer applications and
13269 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
13270 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
13271 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
13272 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
13273 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
13274 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
13275 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
13276 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
13277 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
13279 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
13280 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
13281 larger stick as well.
</p>
13287 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
13292 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13294 <div class=
"entry">
13295 <div class=
"title">
13296 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release
</a>
13302 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13303 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13304 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13305 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
13306 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13307 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
13308 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13309 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
13311 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13312 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13313 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13314 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13315 of these cards.
</p>
13321 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/ltsp">ltsp
</a>.
13326 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13328 <div class=
"entry">
13329 <div class=
"title">
13330 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian
</a>
13336 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13337 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13338 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13339 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13340 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
13341 notes are available on
13342 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13343 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13344 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13345 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
13346 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13347 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
13348 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13349 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
13350 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
13352 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
13353 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
13359 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<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/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
13364 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13366 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"english.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
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7)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
13462 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
13464 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
13471 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
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8)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
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2)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
13500 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
13502 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
13513 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
13515 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
13517 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
13519 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
13521 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
5)
</a></li>
13523 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
12)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
13527 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
67)
</a></li>
13529 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
118)
</a></li>
13531 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
9)
</a></li>
13533 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
7)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
173)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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10)
</a></li>
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9)
</a></li>
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32)
</a></li>
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17)
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8)
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6)
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1)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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219)
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148)
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4)
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39)
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35)
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4)
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</a></li>
13613 <p style=
"text-align: right">
13614 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4
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