blog/tags/english/english.rss

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   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged english</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged english</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am very happy that we in the
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)&lt;/a&gt;,
  16 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
  17 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt;, finally managed to
  18 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
  19 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixmystreet.org/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt;.  This
  20 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
  21 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is already live, and
  22 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
  23 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml&quot;&gt;press
  24 release and announcement&lt;/a&gt; went out this morning.&lt;/p&gt;
  25
  26 &lt;p&gt;FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
  27 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
  28 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
  29 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
  30 reports in public.&lt;/p&gt;
  31 </description>
  32         </item>
  33
  34         <item>
  35                 <title>Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</title>
  36                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html</link>
  37                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html</guid>
  38                 <pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 13:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
  39                 <description>&lt;p&gt;So, Sony caved in
  40 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504&quot;&gt;according
  41 to Rob Lowe&lt;/a&gt;) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
  42 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122&quot;&gt;according
  43 to Newt Gingrich&lt;/a&gt;).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
  44 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
  45 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
  46 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
  47 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
  48 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
  49 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
  50 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
  51 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
  52 being used to bring Sony on its knees.&lt;/p&gt;
  53
  54 &lt;p&gt;I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
  55 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
  56 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
  57 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.&lt;/p&gt;
  58
  59 &lt;p&gt;There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
  60 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
  61 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
  62 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven&quot;&gt;tax haven&lt;/a&gt;
  63 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
  64 income. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  65 </description>
  66         </item>
  67
  68         <item>
  69                 <title>How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</title>
  70                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</link>
  71                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html</guid>
  72                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  73                 <description>&lt;p&gt;By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
  74 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
  75 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
  76 courtesy of
  77 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html&quot;&gt;Erich
  78 Schubert&lt;/a&gt; and
  79 &lt;a href=&quot;http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/&quot;&gt;Simon
  80 McVittie&lt;/a&gt;.
  81
  82 &lt;p&gt;If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
  83 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
  84 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit&lt;/tt&gt; with this content before
  85 you upgrade:&lt;/p&gt;
  86
  87 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  88 Package: systemd-sysv
  89 Pin: release o=Debian
  90 Pin-Priority: -1
  91 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
  92
  93 &lt;p&gt;This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
  94 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
  95 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
  96 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
  97 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.&lt;/p&gt;
  98
  99 &lt;p&gt;If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 100 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 101 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 102 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 103 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 104 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 105
 106 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 107 preseed/late_command=&quot;in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core&quot;
 108 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
 109
 110 &lt;p&gt;Next, the line to use in a preseed file:&lt;/p&gt;
 111
 112 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 113 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 114 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
 115
 116 &lt;p&gt;One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 117 the sysvinit-core package.&lt;/p&gt;
 118
 119 &lt;p&gt;I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 120 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 121 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 122 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 123 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 124 Jessie is released.&lt;/p&gt;
 125
 126 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 127 &lt;ahref=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg&quot;&gt;a
 128 blog post by Torsten Glaser&lt;/a&gt;, added --purge to the preseed
 129 line.&lt;/p&gt;
 130 </description>
 131         </item>
 132
 133         <item>
 134                 <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
 135                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
 136                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
 137                 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
 138                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 139 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 140 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.&lt;/p&gt;
 141
 142 &lt;p&gt;A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 143 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 144 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 145 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 146 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 147 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 148 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 149 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html&quot;&gt;proposed
 150 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October&lt;/a&gt; and got a
 151 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 152 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 153 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 154 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP&quot;&gt;the
 155 Mailpile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dee.su/cables&quot;&gt;the Cables&lt;/a&gt; systems
 156 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.&lt;/p&gt;
 157
 158 &lt;p&gt;To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 159 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 160 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 161 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 162 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 163 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 164 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 165 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 166 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 167 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 168 were fairly easy, and
 169 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp&quot;&gt;the
 170 source code for the Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from github.  I
 171 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 172 useful approach.&lt;/p&gt;
 173
 174 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 175 mail system installed (or run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get purge exim4-config&lt;/tt&gt; to
 176 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 177 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 178 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service&lt;/tt&gt; and follow
 179 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 180 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 181 this:&lt;/p&gt;
 182
 183 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 184 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 185   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 186 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 187
 188 &lt;p&gt;This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 189 address with your own address to test your server. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 190
 191 &lt;p&gt;The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 192 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 193 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 194 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 195 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 196 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 197 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 198 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 199 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 200 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 201 system.&lt;/p&gt;
 202
 203 &lt;p&gt;Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 204 &lt;tt&gt;fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion&lt;/tt&gt; mail address, deliverable over
 205 SMTorP. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 206 </description>
 207         </item>
 208
 209         <item>
 210                 <title>First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</title>
 211                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</link>
 212                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</guid>
 213                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
 214                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
 215 sent out
 216 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;this
 217 announcement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
 218
 219 &lt;pre&gt;
 220 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
 221 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
 222
 223 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
 224 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
 225 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
 226 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
 227 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
 228 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
 229 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
 230
 231 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 232 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 233 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
 234 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
 235 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
 236 of at least 5 characters!
 237
 238  [1] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 239
 240 Would you like to give your school&#39;s computer a longer life? Are you
 241 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
 242 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
 243 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
 244 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
 245
 246 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
 247 mostly in Germany and Norway.
 248
 249 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
 250 ===============================
 251
 252 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
 253 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 254 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 255 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 256 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 257 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 258 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 259 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
 260 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 261 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 262 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 263 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
 264 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 265 environment.
 266
 267  [2] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.skolelinux.org/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 268  [3] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 269
 270 Full release notes and manual
 271 =============================
 272
 273 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
 274 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
 275 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
 276 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
 277 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
 278
 279  [4] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 280  [5] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 281
 282 Where to get it
 283 ---------------
 284
 285 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
 286
 287  * &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;
 288  * &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;
 289  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
 290
 291 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
 292
 293 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
 294 ===============================================================================
 295
 296
 297 Installation changes
 298 --------------------
 299
 300  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
 301
 302 Software updates
 303 ----------------
 304
 305 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
 306
 307  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
 308  * Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
 309    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; is installed by default; to
 310    choose one of the others see manual.)
 311  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
 312  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
 313  * GOsa 2.7.4
 314  * LTSP 5.5.4
 315  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 316  * new boot framework: systemd
 317  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
 318  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 319  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 320  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
 321  * golearn 0.9
 322  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 323  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 324  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
 325    installation.
 326  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
 327    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
 328
 329  [6] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 330  [7] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 331
 332 Fixed bugs
 333 ----------
 334
 335  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 336    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 337    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
 338  * and many others.
 339
 340 Documentation and translation updates
 341 -------------------------------------
 342
 343  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
 344    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
 345    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
 346
 347 Other changes
 348 -------------
 349
 350  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
 351    server takes more time.
 352  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
 353    doesn&#39;t work.
 354
 355 Regressions / known problems
 356 ----------------------------
 357
 358  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
 359    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
 360    and Debian bug #762103).
 361  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
 362    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
 363  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
 364    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
 365    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
 366
 367 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
 368
 369  [8] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 370
 371 How to report bugs
 372 ------------------
 373
 374 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 375
 376 About Debian
 377 ============
 378
 379 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 380 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 381 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 382 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 383 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 384 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 385 operating system.
 386
 387 Contact Information
 388 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
 389 mail to press@debian.org.
 390
 391  [9] &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;
 392 &lt;/pre&gt;
 393 </description>
 394         </item>
 395
 396         <item>
 397                 <title>I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</title>
 398                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</link>
 399                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</guid>
 400                 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 401                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent last weekend at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makercon.no/&quot;&gt;Makercon
 402 Nordic&lt;/a&gt;, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
 403 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
 404 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
 405 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
 406 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
 407 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
 408 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt;, a
 409 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
 410 live.&lt;/p&gt;
 411
 412 &lt;p&gt;Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
 413 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
 414 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/&quot;&gt;now becoming
 415 public&lt;/a&gt; on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
 416 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
 417 &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/&quot;&gt;Creative
 418 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge&lt;/a&gt;.  Many great
 419 talks available.  Check it out! :)&lt;/p&gt;
 420 </description>
 421         </item>
 422
 423         <item>
 424                 <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
 425                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
 426                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
 427                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 428                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 429 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 430 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 431 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 432 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 433 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 434 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 435 &lt;a href=&quot;http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin&quot;&gt;the
 436 listadmin program&lt;/a&gt;.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 437 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 438 lists I recently took over:&lt;/p&gt;
 439
 440 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 441 % time listadmin xiph
 442 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 443 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 444
 445 real    0m1.709s
 446 user    0m0.232s
 447 sys     0m0.012s
 448 %
 449 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 450
 451 &lt;p&gt;In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 452 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 453 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 454 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 455 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 456 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 457 program.&lt;/p&gt;
 458
 459 &lt;p&gt;If you install
 460 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin&quot;&gt;the listadmin
 461 package&lt;/a&gt; from Debian and create a file &lt;tt&gt;~/.listadmin.ini&lt;/tt&gt;
 462 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:&lt;/p&gt;
 463
 464 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 465 username username@example.org
 466 spamlevel 23
 467 default discard
 468 discard_if_reason &quot;Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list.&quot;
 469
 470 password secret
 471 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 472 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 473
 474 password hidden
 475 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 476 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 477
 478 &lt;p&gt;There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 479 learn the details.&lt;/p&gt;
 480
 481 &lt;p&gt;If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 482 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 483 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 484 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:&lt;/p&gt;
 485
 486 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 487 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 488 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 489
 490 &lt;p&gt;If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 491 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 492 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 493 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 494 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 495 email.&lt;/p&gt;
 496
 497 &lt;p&gt;Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 498 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 499 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 500 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 501 software.&lt;/p&gt;
 502
 503 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 504 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 505 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 506
 507 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-27: Added missing &#39;username&#39; statement in
 508 configuration example.  Also, I&#39;ve been told that the
 509 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 510 sure why.&lt;/p&gt;
 511 </description>
 512         </item>
 513
 514         <item>
 515                 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
 516                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
 517                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
 518                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
 519                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 520 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 521 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 522 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 523 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
 524 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 525 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
 526
 527 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 528 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 529 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 530 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 531 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
 532
 533 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 534 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 535 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 536 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 537 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 538 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 539 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 540 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 541 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 542 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
 543
 544 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 545 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 546 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 547 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
 548
 549 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 550 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
 551
 552 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 553 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 554 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 555 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 556
 557 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 558 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 559 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 560 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 561 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 562 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 563 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 564 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
 565
 566 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 567 this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 568
 569 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 570 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 571 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 572 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 573 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
 574
 575 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 576 Task: isenkram-packages
 577 Section: hardware
 578 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 579  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 580  proposed.
 581 Test-new-install: show show
 582 Relevance: 8
 583 Packages: for-current-hardware
 584
 585 Task: isenkram-firmware
 586 Section: hardware
 587 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 588  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 589  packages are proposed.
 590 Test-new-install: mark show
 591 Relevance: 8
 592 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 593 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 594
 595 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 596 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 597 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 598 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 599 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 600
 601 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 602 #!/bin/sh
 603 #
 604 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 605 export PATH
 606 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 607 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 608
 609 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 610 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 611
 612 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 613 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 614 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 615 install.&lt;/p&gt;
 616
 617 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
 618 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 619 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
 620 </description>
 621         </item>
 622
 623         <item>
 624                 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
 625                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
 626                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
 627                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 628                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 629 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 630 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 631 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
 632
 633 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 634
 635 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 636 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 637 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 638 </description>
 639         </item>
 640
 641         <item>
 642                 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
 643                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
 644                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
 645                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 646                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
 647 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 648 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 649 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 650 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
 651
 652 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
 653 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
 654 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
 655 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
 656 download page&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 657 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
 658
 659 &lt;ul&gt;
 660
 661  &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
 662  &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 663    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
 664  &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
 665  &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
 666  &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
 667  &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
 668  &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
 669  &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 670    the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
 671  &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
 672  &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
 673  &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
 674  &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 675    with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
 676
 677 &lt;/ul&gt;
 678
 679 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 680 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 681 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 682 </description>
 683         </item>
 684
 685         <item>
 686                 <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
 687                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
 688                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
 689                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 690                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 691 project&lt;/a&gt; provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 692 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 693 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 694 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 695 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 696 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 697 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 698 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 699 future.  The
 700 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie&quot;&gt;current
 701 status&lt;/a&gt; can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 702 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 703 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 704 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.&lt;/p&gt;
 705
 706 &lt;p&gt;First, download the test ISO via
 707 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;ftp&lt;/a&gt;,
 708 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso&quot;&gt;http&lt;/a&gt;
 709 or rsync (use
 710 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 711 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 712 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 713 install with some tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;
 714
 715 &lt;p&gt;When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 716 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run&lt;/p&gt;
 717
 718 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 719 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 720 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 721
 722 &lt;p&gt;and add &#39;exit 0&#39; as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 723 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 724 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 725 due to a known bug in eatmydata.&lt;/p&gt;
 726
 727 &lt;p&gt;When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 728 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 729 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 730 your need.&lt;/p&gt;
 731
 732 &lt;p&gt;If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 733 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 734 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 735 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 736 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 737 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 738 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 739 days.&lt;/p&gt;
 740
 741 &lt;p&gt;I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 742 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 743 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 744 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 745 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 746 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 747 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 748 provided in bug &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;#702711&lt;/a&gt;.
 749 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
 750
 751 &lt;p&gt;I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 752 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 753 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.&lt;/p&gt;
 754 </description>
 755         </item>
 756
 757         <item>
 758                 <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
 759                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
 760                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
 761                 <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 762                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd tool&lt;/a&gt;
 763 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 764 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 765 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 766 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 767 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 768 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 769 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 770 get &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd&quot;&gt;an updated version
 771 into Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 772 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 773 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 774 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.&lt;/p&gt;
 775
 776 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 777 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 778 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 779 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 780 I&#39;ve added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 781 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 782 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 783 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/&quot;&gt;the git source&lt;/a&gt; and join
 784 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/&quot;&gt;the project mailing
 785 list&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 786 </description>
 787         </item>
 788
 789         <item>
 790                 <title>Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</title>
 791                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</link>
 792                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html</guid>
 793                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 794                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; installer could be
 795 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 796 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; using
 797 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 798 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 799 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/613428&quot;&gt;bug #613428&lt;/a&gt; about too
 800 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 801 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 802 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 803 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 804 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 805 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 806 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 807 relevant while the installer is running.&lt;/p&gt;
 808
 809 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 810 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 811 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 812 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 813 depend on the small and clever package
 814 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata&quot;&gt;eatmydata&lt;/a&gt;, which
 815 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 816 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 817 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 818 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 819 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 820 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 821 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 822 &quot;eatmydata&amp;nbsp;$program&amp;nbsp;$@&quot;, to get the same effect.
 823 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 824 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.&lt;/p&gt;
 825
 826 &lt;p&gt;The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 827 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 828 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 829 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 830 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 831 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 832 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 833 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 834 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 835 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 836 /var/log/syslog between the &quot;pkgsel: starting tasksel&quot; and the
 837 &quot;pkgsel: finishing up&quot; lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 838 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 839 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 840 dialog.&lt;/p&gt;
 841
 842 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
 843
 844 &lt;tr&gt;
 845 &lt;th&gt;Machine/setup&lt;/th&gt;
 846 &lt;th&gt;Original tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
 847 &lt;th&gt;Optimised tasksel&lt;/th&gt;
 848 &lt;th&gt;Reduction&lt;/th&gt;
 849 &lt;/tr&gt;
 850
 851 &lt;tr&gt;
 852 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
 853 &lt;td&gt;64 min (07:46-08:50)&lt;/td&gt;
 854 &lt;td&gt;&lt;44 min (11:27-12:11)&lt;/td&gt;
 855 &lt;td&gt;&gt;20 min 18%&lt;/td&gt;
 856 &lt;/tr&gt;
 857
 858 &lt;tr&gt;
 859 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE&lt;/td&gt;
 860 &lt;td&gt;57 min (08:48-09:45)&lt;/td&gt;
 861 &lt;td&gt;34 min (07:43-08:17)&lt;/td&gt;
 862 &lt;td&gt;23 min 40%&lt;/td&gt;
 863 &lt;/tr&gt;
 864
 865 &lt;tr&gt;
 866 &lt;td&gt;Latitude D505 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
 867 &lt;td&gt;22 min (10:37-10:59)&lt;/td&gt;
 868 &lt;td&gt;11 min (11:16-11:27)&lt;/td&gt;
 869 &lt;td&gt;11 min 50%&lt;/td&gt;
 870 &lt;/tr&gt;
 871
 872 &lt;tr&gt;
 873 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Minimal&lt;/td&gt;
 874 &lt;td&gt;6 min (08:19-08:25)&lt;/td&gt;
 875 &lt;td&gt;4 min (08:04-08:08)&lt;/td&gt;
 876 &lt;td&gt;2 min 33%&lt;/td&gt;
 877 &lt;/tr&gt;
 878
 879 &lt;tr&gt;
 880 &lt;td&gt;Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE&lt;/td&gt;
 881 &lt;td&gt;19 min (09:21-09:40)&lt;/td&gt;
 882 &lt;td&gt;15 min (10:25-10:40)&lt;/td&gt;
 883 &lt;td&gt;4 min 21%&lt;/td&gt;
 884 &lt;/tr&gt;
 885
 886 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 887
 888 &lt;p&gt;The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 889 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 890 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 891 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 892 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 893 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
 894
 895 &lt;p&gt;The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 896 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/&quot;&gt;Debian
 897 Installer&lt;/a&gt;, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 898 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 899 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 900 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 901 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 902 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 903 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 904 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 905 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 906 for the entire installation.&lt;/p&gt;
 907
 908 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve implemented this in the
 909 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install&quot;&gt;debian-edu-install&lt;/a&gt;
 910 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 911 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 912 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 913 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 914
 915 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 916 #!/bin/sh
 917 set -e
 918 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 919 info() {
 920     logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;info: $*&quot;
 921 }
 922 error() {
 923     logger -t my-pkgsel &quot;error: $*&quot;
 924 }
 925 override_install() {
 926     apt-install eatmydata || true
 927     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 928         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 929             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 930             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 931             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 932                 info &quot;diverting $file using eatmydata&quot;
 933                 printf &quot;#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \&quot;\$@\&quot;\n&quot; \
 934                     &gt; /target$file.edu
 935                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 936                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 937                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 938                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 939             else
 940                 error &quot;unable to divert $file, as it is missing.&quot;
 941             fi
 942         done
 943     else
 944         error &quot;unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage&quot;
 945     fi
 946 }
 947
 948 override_install
 949 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 950
 951 &lt;p&gt;To clean up, another shell script should go into
 952 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 953
 954 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 955 #! /bin/sh -e
 956 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 957 error() {
 958     logger -t my-finish-install &quot;error: $@&quot;
 959 }
 960 remove_install_override() {
 961     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 962         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 963         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 964             rm /target$file
 965             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 966                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 967             rm /target$file.edu
 968         else
 969             error &quot;Missing divert for $file.&quot;
 970         fi
 971     done
 972     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 973 }
 974
 975 remove_install_override
 976 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 977
 978 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 979 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 980 finish-install.d scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
 981
 982 &lt;p&gt;By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 983 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 984 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 985 depend on the side effects of the change.  I&#39;m not aware of any, but I
 986 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 987 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 988 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 989 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 990 everyone.&lt;/p&gt;
 991
 992 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
 993 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
 994 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/702711&quot;&gt;bug #702711&lt;/a&gt;.  An updated
 995 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
 996
 997 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
 998 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
 999 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1000 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1001 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.&lt;/p&gt;
1002
1003 &lt;p&gt;Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1004 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/765738&quot;&gt;bug #765738&lt;/a&gt; in eatmydata only
1005 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1006 optimization again.  If &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/768893&quot;&gt;unblock
1007 request 768893&lt;/a&gt; is accepted, it should be working again.&lt;/p&gt;
1008 </description>
1009         </item>
1010
1011         <item>
1012                 <title>Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</title>
1013                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</link>
1014                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html</guid>
1015                 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1016                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1017 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; about
1018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/&quot;&gt;the
1019 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt;, and was very happy to
1020 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1021 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1022 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1023 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1024 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1025 those problems are gone now.&lt;/p&gt;
1026
1027 &lt;p&gt;Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1028 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sks-keyservers.net/&quot;&gt;sks-keyservers.net&lt;/a&gt; service
1029 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1030 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1031 better than what I have used so far. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1032
1033 &lt;p&gt;Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1034 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1035 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?&lt;/p&gt;
1036
1037 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I&#39;ve updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1038 line:&lt;/p&gt;
1039
1040 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1041 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1042 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1043
1044 &lt;p&gt;With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1045 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1046 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1047 keyserver automatically should their need it:&lt;/p&gt;
1048
1049 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1050 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1051 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1052 %
1053 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1054
1055 &lt;p&gt;Now if only
1056 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/&quot;&gt;the
1057 HKP lookup protocol&lt;/a&gt; supported finding signature paths, I would be
1058 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1059 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1060 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1061 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1062 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1063 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1064 for a future version of the protocol?&lt;/p&gt;
1065 </description>
1066         </item>
1067
1068         <item>
1069                 <title>Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</title>
1070                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html</link>
1071                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html</guid>
1072                 <pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1073                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
1074 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
1075 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
1076 create &quot;personal&quot; or &quot;non-commercial&quot; videos or get a license
1077 agreement with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com&quot;&gt;MPEG LA&lt;/a&gt;.  If one
1078 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
1079 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
1080 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
1081 am not sure.
1082 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html&quot;&gt;Back
1083 then&lt;/a&gt;, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
1084 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
1085 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
1086 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
1087 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
1088 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
1089 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
1090 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
1091 licenses are.&lt;/p&gt;
1092
1093 &lt;p&gt;These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
1094 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2&quot;&gt;published
1095 end user&lt;/a&gt;
1096 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf&quot;&gt;license
1097 text&lt;/a&gt; (converted to lower case text for easier reading):&lt;/p&gt;
1098
1099 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1100 &lt;p&gt;18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
1101 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: &lt;/p&gt;
1102
1103 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
1104 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
1105 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
1106 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
1107 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
1108 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
1109 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
1110 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
1111 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
1112 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
1113 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
1114 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
1115 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
1116 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
1117 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
1118 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
1119 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
1120 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.&lt;/p&gt;
1121
1122 &lt;p&gt;18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
1123 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:&lt;/p&gt;
1124
1125 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1126 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
1127 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
1128 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
1129 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
1130 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
1131 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
1132 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.&lt;/p&gt;
1133 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1134
1135 &lt;p&gt;Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
1136 personal or non-commercial purposes.&lt;/p&gt;
1137
1138 &lt;p&gt;The Sorenson Media software have
1139 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/&quot;&gt;similar terms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
1140
1141 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1142
1143 &lt;p&gt;With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
1144 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
1145 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
1146 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
1147 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
1148 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
1149 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
1150 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
1151 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
1152 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
1153 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
1154 http://www.mpegla.com.&lt;/p&gt;
1155
1156 &lt;p&gt;With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
1157 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
1158 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
1159 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
1160 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
1161 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
1162 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
1163 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
1164 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
1165 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
1166 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
1167 additional details.&lt;/p&gt;
1168
1169 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1170
1171 &lt;p&gt;Some free software like
1172 &lt;a href=&quot;https://handbrake.fr/&quot;&gt;Handbrake&lt;/A&gt; and
1173 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ffmpeg.org/&quot;&gt;FFMPEG&lt;/a&gt; uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
1174 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
1175 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.&lt;/p&gt;
1176 </description>
1177         </item>
1178
1179         <item>
1180                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</title>
1181                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html</link>
1182                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html</guid>
1183                 <pubDate>Thu, 31 Jul 2014 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1184                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1185 schools, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
1186 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1187 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1188 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1189 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.&lt;/p&gt;
1190
1191 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1192
1193 &lt;p&gt;My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I&#39;m married with Hedda, a self
1194 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
1195 haven&#39;t worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
1196 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1197 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1198 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1199 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1200 works with Windows . :-(&lt;/p&gt;
1201
1202 &lt;p&gt;In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1203 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
1204 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
1205 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1206 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1207 work with the documentations of our patients.&lt;/p&gt;
1208
1209 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1210 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1211
1212 &lt;p&gt;Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1213 his school (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/&quot;&gt;Gymnasium
1214 Harsewinkel&lt;/a&gt;).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1215 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1216 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1217 computer skills in optional lessons.  I&#39;m spending 4-6 hours a week
1218 with this job.&lt;/p&gt;
1219
1220 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1221 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1222
1223 &lt;p&gt;The independence.&lt;/p&gt;
1224
1225 &lt;p&gt;First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1226 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1227 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.&lt;/p&gt;
1228
1229 &lt;p&gt;Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1230 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
1231 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1232 working reliable. &lt;/p&gt;
1233
1234 &lt;p&gt;We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
1235 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1236 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
1237 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
1238 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1239 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1240 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1241 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.&lt;/p&gt;
1242
1243 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1244 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1245
1246 &lt;p&gt;Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &amp;lt;Irony on&amp;gt; And Linux
1247 isn&#39;t cool. It&#39;s software for freaks using the command line. &amp;lt;Irony
1248 off&amp;gt; They don&#39;t realize the stability of the system. &lt;/p&gt;
1249
1250 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1251
1252 &lt;p&gt;Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
1253 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)&lt;/p&gt;
1254
1255 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1256 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1257
1258 &lt;p&gt;In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1259 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1260 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1261 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1262 Office. They don&#39;t know about the possibility to use Free Software
1263 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
1264 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
1265 </description>
1266         </item>
1267
1268         <item>
1269                 <title>98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</title>
1270                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
1271                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
1272                 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1273                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
1274 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
1275 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
1276 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
1277 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
1278 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
1279 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
1280 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
1281 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
1282 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
1283 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
1284 the translation show this very well:&lt;/p&gt;
1285
1286 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1287
1288 &lt;p&gt;If you want to read the result, check out the
1289 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;
1290 project pages and the
1291 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;,
1292 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
1293 and HTML version available in the
1294 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive&quot;&gt;archive
1295 directory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1296
1297 &lt;p&gt;Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1298 you find any.&lt;/p&gt;
1299 </description>
1300         </item>
1301
1302         <item>
1303                 <title>From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</title>
1304                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</link>
1305                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html</guid>
1306                 <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1307                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1308 project&lt;/a&gt; provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1309 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1310 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1311 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.&lt;/p&gt;
1312
1313 &lt;p&gt;One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1314 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1315 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1316 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1317 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1318 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1319 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1320 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1321 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1322 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1323 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1324 goals.&lt;/p&gt;
1325
1326 &lt;p&gt;We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1327 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;Debian
1328 wiki&lt;/a&gt;, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1329 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1330 for each chapter, and finally one &quot;collection page&quot; gluing all the
1331 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1332 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne&quot;&gt;the
1333 AllInOne page&lt;/a&gt;).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1334 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1335 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/&quot;&gt;MoinMoin&lt;/a&gt; installation on
1336 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1337 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;the Docbook format&lt;/a&gt;, we can fetch
1338 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1339 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1340 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1341 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1342 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1343 using the &lt;tt&gt;documentation/scripts/get_manual&lt;/tt&gt; program, and the
1344 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1345 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1346 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1347 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1348 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1349 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.&lt;/p&gt;
1350
1351 &lt;p&gt;But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1352 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1353 track the English original.  For this we use the
1354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html&quot;&gt;poxml&lt;/a&gt; package,
1355 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1356 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1357 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1358 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1359 files), which the translations update with the native language
1360 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1361 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1362 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1363 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1364 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1365 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1366 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1367 of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;
1368
1369 &lt;p&gt;The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1370 recommend using
1371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/&quot;&gt;lokalize&lt;/a&gt;,
1372 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1373 &lt;a href=&quot;http://pootle.translatehouse.org/&quot;&gt;Poodle&lt;/a&gt; or
1374 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.transifex.com/&quot;&gt;Transifex&lt;/a&gt;.  All we care about
1375 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1376 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1377 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;bug reports
1378 against the debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1379
1380 &lt;p&gt;One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1381 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1382 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1383 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1384 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1385 translated images by storing translated versions in
1386 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1387 package maintainers know more.&lt;/p&gt;
1388
1389 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1390 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/&quot;&gt;the content
1391 of the documentation packages on the web&lt;/a&gt;.  See for example the
1392 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf&quot;&gt;Italian
1393 PDF version&lt;/a&gt; or the
1394 &lt;a href=&quot;http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html&quot;&gt;German
1395 HTML version&lt;/a&gt;.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1396 but perhaps it will be done in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
1397
1398 &lt;p&gt;To learn more, check out
1399 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html&quot;&gt;the
1400 debian-edu-doc package&lt;/a&gt;,
1401 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/&quot;&gt;the
1402 manual on the wiki&lt;/a&gt; and
1403 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations&quot;&gt;the
1404 translation instructions&lt;/a&gt; in the manual.&lt;/p&gt;
1405 </description>
1406         </item>
1407
1408         <item>
1409                 <title>Free software car computer solution?</title>
1410                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html</link>
1411                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html</guid>
1412                 <pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2014 18:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
1413                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Dear lazyweb.  I&#39;m planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
1414 in my car, connected to
1415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776&quot;&gt;a
1416 small screen&lt;/a&gt; next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
1417 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
1418 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer&quot;&gt;Carputer&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  But I
1419 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
1420 such car computer.&lt;/p&gt;
1421
1422 &lt;p&gt;This is my current wish list for such system:&lt;/p&gt;
1423
1424 &lt;ul&gt;
1425
1426  &lt;li&gt;Work on Raspberry Pi.&lt;/li&gt;
1427
1428  &lt;li&gt;Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
1429    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
1430    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
1431    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;Openstreetmap&lt;/a&gt; or OCR
1432    info gathered from a dashboard camera.&lt;/li&gt;
1433
1434  &lt;li&gt;Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
1435    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
1436    route.&lt;/li&gt;
1437
1438  &lt;li&gt;Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.&lt;/li&gt;
1439
1440  &lt;li&gt;Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
1441    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
1442    (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/&quot;&gt;iodine&lt;/a&gt;) or ICMP
1443    (&lt;a href=&quot;http://code.gerade.org/hans/&quot;&gt;Hans&lt;/a&gt;) if direct
1444    connection do not work.&lt;/li&gt;
1445
1446  &lt;li&gt;Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
1447    or some standard car mesh protocol.&lt;/li&gt;
1448
1449  &lt;li&gt;Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
1450    (speed calculated between two cameras).&lt;/li&gt;
1451
1452  &lt;li&gt;Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
1453    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.&lt;/li&gt;
1454
1455 &lt;/ul&gt;
1456
1457 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
1458 some or all of these features, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
1459 </description>
1460         </item>
1461
1462         <item>
1463                 <title>Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</title>
1464                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html</link>
1465                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html</guid>
1466                 <pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2014 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1467                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;the Gnash
1468 project&lt;/a&gt; for quite a while now.  It is a free software
1469 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
1470 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
1471 newer AVM2 format - see
1472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lightspark.github.io/&quot;&gt;Lightspark&lt;/a&gt; for that one),
1473 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
1474 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
1475 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
1476 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
1477 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
1478 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
1479 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
1480 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
1481 sites do not work yet.&lt;/p&gt;
1482
1483 &lt;p&gt;A few months ago, I started looking at
1484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt;, the static source
1485 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
1486 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
1487 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
1488 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
1489 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
1490 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
1491 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
1492 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
1493 code checkers I have tested over the years.&lt;/p&gt;
1494
1495 &lt;p&gt;Since a few weeks ago, I&#39;ve been working with the other Gnash
1496 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
1497 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
1498 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
1499 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
1500 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
1501 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.&lt;/p&gt;
1502
1503 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, you find us on
1504 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev&quot;&gt;the
1505 gnash-dev mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and on
1506 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash&quot;&gt;the #gnash channel on
1507 irc.freenode.net IRC server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1508 </description>
1509         </item>
1510
1511         <item>
1512                 <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</title>
1513                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</link>
1514                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</guid>
1515                 <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1516                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1517 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1518 So I implemented one, using
1519 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;my Isenkram
1520 package&lt;/a&gt;.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1521 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1522 &quot;Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)&quot;.  When you
1523 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1524 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.&lt;p&gt;
1525
1526 &lt;p&gt;The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1527 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1528 packages to install.  The first part is in
1529 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
1530 this:&lt;/p&gt;
1531
1532 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1533 Task: isenkram
1534 Section: hardware
1535 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1536  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1537  proposed.
1538 Test-new-install: mark show
1539 Relevance: 8
1540 Packages: for-current-hardware
1541 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1542
1543 &lt;p&gt;The second part is in
1544 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
1545 this:&lt;/p&gt;
1546
1547 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1548 #!/bin/sh
1549 #
1550 (
1551     isenkram-lookup
1552     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1553 ) | sort -u
1554 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1555
1556 &lt;p&gt;All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1557 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1558 have installed on our machines.  I&#39;ve not been able to find a way to
1559 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1560 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1561 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.&lt;/p&gt;
1562
1563 &lt;p&gt;The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1564 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1565 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1566 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1567 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1568 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/719837&quot;&gt;#719837&lt;/a&gt; and
1569 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/730704&quot;&gt;#730704&lt;/a&gt;).  The cause is in
1570 the python-apt code (bug
1571 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/745487&quot;&gt;#745487&lt;/a&gt;), but using a
1572 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1573 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1574 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1575 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1576 unstable today.&lt;/p&gt;
1577
1578 &lt;p&gt;I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1579 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1580 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1581 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1582 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt;, and
1583 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive&quot;&gt;GSoC
1584 project&lt;/a&gt; will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1585 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1586 start using the information when it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;
1587
1588 &lt;p&gt;If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1589 add a &quot;Xb-Modaliases&quot; header to your control file like I did in
1590 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;the pymissile
1591 package&lt;/a&gt; or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1592 package.  See also
1593 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;all my
1594 blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt; for details on the notation.  I expect
1595 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1596 moment I got no better place to store it.&lt;/p&gt;
1597 </description>
1598         </item>
1599
1600         <item>
1601                 <title>FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</title>
1602                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</link>
1603                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html</guid>
1604                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1605                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
1606 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1607 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1608 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1609 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1610 today a major mile stone was reached.&lt;/p&gt;
1611
1612 &lt;p&gt;Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1613 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1614 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1615 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1616 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1617 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1618 build everything directly from Debian. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1619
1620 &lt;p&gt;Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1621 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;,
1622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt;,
1623 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite&quot;&gt;pagekite&lt;/a&gt;,
1624 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor&quot;&gt;tor&lt;/a&gt;,
1625 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;,
1626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud&quot;&gt;owncloud&lt;/a&gt; and
1627 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq&quot;&gt;dnsmasq&lt;/a&gt;.  There
1628 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1629 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1630 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie&quot;&gt;check out
1631 the manual&lt;/a&gt; and help us improve it.&lt;/p&gt;
1632
1633 &lt;p&gt;To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1634 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1635 become root:&lt;/p&gt;
1636
1637 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1638 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1639   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1640   u-boot-tools
1641 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1642   freedom-maker
1643 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1644 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1645
1646 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1647 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1648 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1649 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1650 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1651 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1652 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1653 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.&lt;/p&gt;
1654
1655 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1656 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1657 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
1658
1659 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1660 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
1661 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1662
1663 &lt;p&gt;I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1664 it still work.&lt;/p&gt;
1665
1666 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1667 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1668 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1669 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1670 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1671 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1672 be run from the plinth web interface.&lt;/p&gt;
1673
1674 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1675 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1676 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
1677 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
1678 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
1679 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
1680 </description>
1681         </item>
1682
1683         <item>
1684                 <title>S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</title>
1685                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</link>
1686                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html</guid>
1687                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1688                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1689 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1690 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1691 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1692 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1693 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1694 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1695 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1696 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1697 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1698 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1699 have looked at a system called
1700 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/&quot;&gt;S3QL&lt;/a&gt;, a locally
1701 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.&lt;/p&gt;
1702
1703 &lt;p&gt;S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1704 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1705 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1706 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1707 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1708 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1709 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1710 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1711 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1712 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1713 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1714 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1715 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.&lt;/p&gt;
1716
1717 &lt;p&gt;It is simple to use.  I&#39;m using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1718 package is included already.  So to get started, run &lt;tt&gt;apt-get
1719 install s3ql&lt;/tt&gt;.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1720 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1721 &lt;a href=&quot;https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy&quot;&gt;how
1722 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service&lt;/a&gt;, because I trust the laws
1723 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1724 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1725 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage&quot;&gt;S3QL
1727 Filesystem for HPC Storage&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1728 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1729 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1730 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1731 account.&lt;/p&gt;
1732
1733 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1734 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1735 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1736 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1737 I&#39;ll refer to it as &lt;tt&gt;bucket-name&lt;/tt&gt; below.  In addition, one need
1738 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1739 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1740
1741 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1742 [s3c]
1743 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1744 backend-login: API-login
1745 backend-password: API-password
1746 fs-passphrase: local-password
1747 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1748
1749 &lt;p&gt;I create my local passphrase using &lt;tt&gt;pwget 50&lt;/tt&gt; or similar,
1750 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1751 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1752 details and password to create it:&lt;/p&gt;
1753
1754 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1755 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1756 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1757   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1758 Enter backend login:
1759 Enter backend password:
1760 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user&#39;s guide, especially
1761 the &#39;Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data&#39; section.
1762 Enter encryption password:
1763 Confirm encryption password:
1764 Generating random encryption key...
1765 Creating metadata tables...
1766 Dumping metadata...
1767 ..objects..
1768 ..blocks..
1769 ..inodes..
1770 ..inode_blocks..
1771 ..symlink_targets..
1772 ..names..
1773 ..contents..
1774 ..ext_attributes..
1775 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1776 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1777 # &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1778
1779 &lt;p&gt;The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1780
1781 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1782 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1783   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1784 Using 4 upload threads.
1785 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1786 Reading metadata...
1787 ..objects..
1788 ..blocks..
1789 ..inodes..
1790 ..inode_blocks..
1791 ..symlink_targets..
1792 ..names..
1793 ..contents..
1794 ..ext_attributes..
1795 Mounting filesystem...
1796 # df -h /s3ql
1797 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1798 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1799 #
1800 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1801
1802 &lt;p&gt;The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1803 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1804 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1805 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1806 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1807 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1808
1809 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1810 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1811 #
1812 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1813
1814 &lt;p&gt;There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1815 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1816 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the &quot;already
1817 mounted&quot; flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1818 file system:&lt;/p&gt;
1819
1820 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1821 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1822 Using cached metadata.
1823 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1824 Checking DB integrity...
1825 Creating temporary extra indices...
1826 Checking lost+found...
1827 Checking cached objects...
1828 Checking names (refcounts)...
1829 Checking contents (names)...
1830 Checking contents (inodes)...
1831 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1832 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1833 Checking objects (backend)...
1834 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1835 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1836 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1837 Checking objects (sizes)...
1838 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1839 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1840 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1841 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1842 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1843 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1844 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1845 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1846 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1847 Checking directory reachability...
1848 Checking unix conventions...
1849 Checking referential integrity...
1850 Dropping temporary indices...
1851 Backing up old metadata...
1852 Dumping metadata...
1853 ..objects..
1854 ..blocks..
1855 ..inodes..
1856 ..inode_blocks..
1857 ..symlink_targets..
1858 ..names..
1859 ..contents..
1860 ..ext_attributes..
1861 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1862 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1863 #
1864 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1865
1866 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1867 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1868 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1869 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1870 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1871 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1872 Both were measured using &lt;tt&gt;dd&lt;/tt&gt;.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1873 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1874 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1875 working set.&lt;/p&gt;
1876
1877 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1878 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1879 busy:&lt;/p&gt;
1880
1881 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1882 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1883   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1884 Using 8 upload threads.
1885 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1886 #
1887 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1888
1889 &lt;p&gt;The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1890 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1891 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1892 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1893 s3qlctrl:
1894
1895 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1896 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1897 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1898 #
1899 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1900
1901 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1902 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1903 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1904 a report:&lt;/p&gt;
1905
1906 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1907 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1908 Directory entries:    9141
1909 Inodes:               9143
1910 Data blocks:          8851
1911 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1912 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1913 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1914 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1915 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1916 #
1917 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1918
1919 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1920 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1921 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.greenqloud.com/&quot;&gt;Greenqloud&lt;/a&gt;,
1922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt;,
1923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/s3/&quot;&gt;Amazon S3 web serivces&lt;/a&gt;,
1924 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rackspace.com/&quot;&gt;Rackspace&lt;/a&gt; and
1925 &lt;a href=&quot;http://crowncloud.net/&quot;&gt;Crowncloud&lt;/A&gt;.  The latter even
1926 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1927 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1928 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1929 best.&lt;/p&gt;
1930
1931 &lt;p&gt;While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1932 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1933 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1934 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1935 poster is titled
1936 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf&quot;&gt;An
1937 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1938 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Hsing-Bung
1939 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1940 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
1941
1942 &lt;p&gt;Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1943 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1944 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1945 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1946 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;my
1947 test code to check file system semantics&lt;/a&gt;, I was happy to discover that
1948 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1949 directories, if one chooses to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
1950
1951 &lt;p&gt;If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1952 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1953 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tarsnap.com/&quot;&gt;Tarsnap service&lt;/a&gt;, which also
1954 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1955 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1956 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1957 only read from it.&lt;/p&gt;
1958
1959 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1960 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1961 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1962 </description>
1963         </item>
1964
1965         <item>
1966                 <title>ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</title>
1967                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html</link>
1968                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html</guid>
1969                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Apr 2014 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
1970                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
1971 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
1972 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
1973 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
1974 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
1975 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
1976 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
1977 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
1978 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
1979 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
1980 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
1981 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
1982 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.&lt;/p&gt;
1983
1984 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reactos.org/&quot;&gt;ReactOS&lt;/a&gt; is a free software
1985 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
1986 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
1987 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
1988 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
1989 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
1990 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
1991 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
1992 from the approach taken by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winehq.org/&quot;&gt;the Wine
1993 project&lt;/a&gt;, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
1994 Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
1995
1996 &lt;p&gt;The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
1997 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
1998 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
1999 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
2000 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
2001 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reactos.org/screenshots&quot;&gt;screen shots on the
2002 project web site&lt;/a&gt; for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
2003 Windows before metro).&lt;/p&gt;
2004
2005 &lt;p&gt;I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
2006 operating systems.  I&#39;ve tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
2007 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
2008 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
2009 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
2010 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
2011 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
2012 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
2013 I&#39;ve tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
2014 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
2015 old Windows binaries, check it out by
2016 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reactos.org/download&quot;&gt;downloading&lt;/a&gt; the
2017 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
2018 image.&lt;/p&gt;
2019 </description>
2020         </item>
2021
2022         <item>
2023                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</title>
2024                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</link>
2025                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</guid>
2026                 <pubDate>Sun, 30 Mar 2014 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2027                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
2028 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
2029 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt;, with a
2030 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
2031 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.&lt;/p&gt;
2032
2033 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2034
2035 &lt;p&gt;My name is Roger Marsal, I&#39;m 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
2036 live in Barcelona, Spain. I&#39;ve got a strong business background and I
2037 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
2038 I&#39;ve co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
2039 last development phase of a new social networking concept.&lt;/p&gt;
2040
2041 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
2042 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
2043 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.&lt;/p&gt;
2044
2045 &lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
2046 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
2047 hunger.&lt;/p&gt;
2048
2049 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2050 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2051
2052 &lt;p&gt;I discovered the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ltsp.org/&quot;&gt;LTSP&lt;/a&gt; advantages
2053 with &quot;Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install&quot; and after a year of use I
2054 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
2055 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
2056 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
2057 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
2058 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
2059 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
2060 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
2061 running.  I just loved it.&lt;/p&gt;
2062
2063 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2064 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2065
2066 &lt;p&gt;I found a main advantage in that, once you know &quot;the tips and
2067 tricks&quot;, a new installation just works out of the box. It&#39;s the most
2068 complete alternative I&#39;ve found to create an LTSP network. All the
2069 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
2070 be made of steel.&lt;/p&gt;
2071
2072 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2073 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2074
2075 &lt;p&gt;I found two main disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;
2076
2077 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not an expert but I&#39;ve got notions and I had to spent a considerable
2078 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I&#39;m quite
2079 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I&#39;m sure many people with few
2080 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
2081 or dropped.&lt;/p&gt;
2082
2083 &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
2084 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
2085 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
2086 discourage many people too.&lt;/p&gt;
2087
2088 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2089
2090 &lt;p&gt;I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
2091 Virtualbox.&lt;/p&gt;
2092
2093
2094 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2095 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2096
2097 &lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
2098 attribute in both &quot;freedom&quot; and &quot;no price&quot; meanings is what will
2099 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
2100 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/&quot;&gt;&quot;R&quot; statistical language&lt;/a&gt;; a
2101 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
2102 Today it&#39;s being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
2103 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
2104 increasingly gain popularity, but I&#39;m sure schools will be one of the
2105 first scenarios where this will happen.&lt;/p&gt;
2106 </description>
2107         </item>
2108
2109         <item>
2110                 <title>Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</title>
2111                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</link>
2112                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</guid>
2113                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2114                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
2115 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
2116 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
2117 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
2118 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
2119 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
2120 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
2121 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
2122 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.&lt;/p&gt;
2123
2124 &lt;p&gt;A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
2125 &quot;stamp&quot; the document and verify that at some given time the document
2126 looked a given way.  Such
2127 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius&quot;&gt;notarius&lt;/a&gt; service
2128 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
2129 called a
2130 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping&quot;&gt;trusted
2131 timestamping service&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;The Internet
2132 Engineering Task Force&lt;/a&gt; standardised how such service could work a
2133 few years ago as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161&quot;&gt;RFC
2134 3161&lt;/a&gt;.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
2135 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
2136 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
2137 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
2138 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
2139 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
2140 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
2141 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
2142 There are several commercial services around providing such
2143 timestamping.  A quick search for
2144 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service&quot;&gt;rfc 3161
2145 service&lt;/a&gt;&quot; pointed me to at least
2146 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/&quot;&gt;DigiStamp&lt;/a&gt;,
2147 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx&quot;&gt;Quo
2148 Vadis&lt;/a&gt;,
2149 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/&quot;&gt;Global Sign&lt;/a&gt;
2150 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx&quot;&gt;Global
2151 Trust Finder&lt;/a&gt;.  The system work as long as the private key of the
2152 trusted third party is not compromised.&lt;/p&gt;
2153
2154 &lt;p&gt;But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
2155 timestamp services available for everyone.  I&#39;ve been looking for one
2156 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
2157 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/&quot;&gt;Deutches
2158 Forschungsnetz&lt;/a&gt; mentioned in
2159 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/&quot;&gt;a
2160 blog by David Müller&lt;/a&gt;.  I then found
2161 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html&quot;&gt;a
2162 good recipe on how to use the service&lt;/a&gt; over at the University of
2163 Greifswald.&lt;/p&gt;
2164
2165 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openssl.org/&quot;&gt;The OpenSSL library&lt;/a&gt; contain
2166 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
2167 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
2168 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
2169 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:&lt;/p&gt;
2170
2171 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2172 #!/bin/sh
2173 set -e
2174 url=&quot;http://zeitstempel.dfn.de&quot;
2175 caurl=&quot;https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt&quot;
2176 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
2177 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
2178 cafile=chain.txt
2179 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
2180     wget -O $cafile &quot;$caurl&quot;
2181 fi
2182 openssl ts -query -data &quot;$1&quot; -cert | tee &quot;$reqfile&quot; \
2183     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h &quot;$url&quot; -o &quot;$resfile&quot;
2184 openssl ts -reply -in &quot;$resfile&quot; -text 1&gt;&amp;2
2185 openssl ts -verify -data &quot;$1&quot; -in &quot;$resfile&quot; -CAfile &quot;$cafile&quot; 1&gt;&amp;2
2186 base64 &lt; &quot;$resfile&quot;
2187 rm &quot;$reqfile&quot; &quot;$resfile&quot;
2188 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2189
2190 &lt;p&gt;The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
2191 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
2192 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
2193 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553&quot;&gt;a bug
2194 in the tsget script&lt;/a&gt;, you might need to modify the included script
2195 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
2196 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
2197 changed.&lt;/p&gt;
2198
2199 &lt;p&gt;But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
2200 Perhaps something for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uninett.no/&quot;&gt;Uninett&lt;/a&gt; or
2201 my work place the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
2202 to set up?&lt;/p&gt;
2203 </description>
2204         </item>
2205
2206         <item>
2207                 <title>Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</title>
2208                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html</link>
2209                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html</guid>
2210                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
2211                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
2212 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
2213 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
2214 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
2215 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
2216 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
2217 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.&lt;/p&gt;
2218
2219 &lt;p&gt;Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
2220 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I&#39;ve also
2221 tried using
2222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html&quot;&gt;dvdbackup
2223 and genisoimage&lt;/a&gt;, but these days I use the marvellous python library
2224 and program
2225 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo&quot;&gt;python-dvdvideo&lt;/a&gt;
2226 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
2227 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html&quot;&gt;in Debian
2228 already&lt;/a&gt; and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
2229 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
2230 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
2231 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
2232 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
2233 this method.&lt;/p&gt;
2234
2235 &lt;p&gt;So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
2236 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
2237 problem is
2238 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831&quot;&gt;DVDs
2239 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters&lt;/a&gt;, which according to
2240 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
2241 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
2242 DVD structures, as the python library
2243 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079&quot;&gt;claim
2244 there is a overlap between objects&lt;/a&gt;.  An equally rare problem claim
2245 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878&quot;&gt;some
2246 value is out of range&lt;/a&gt;.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
2247 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
2248 collection will stay with me in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
2249
2250 &lt;p&gt;So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
2251 python-dvdvideo. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2252 </description>
2253         </item>
2254
2255         <item>
2256                 <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
2257                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
2258                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
2259                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2260                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;Freedombox
2261 project&lt;/a&gt; is working on providing the software and hardware for
2262 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2263 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2264 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2265 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2266 release (0.2).&lt;/p&gt;
2267
2268 &lt;p&gt;And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2269 new version will provide &quot;hard drive&quot; / SD card / USB stick images for
2270 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2271 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2272 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2273 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2274 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2275 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2276 and build using
2277 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
2278 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2279
2280 &lt;pre&gt;
2281 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2282   freedom-maker
2283 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2284   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2285   u-boot-tools
2286 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2287 &lt;/pre&gt;
2288
2289 &lt;p&gt;Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2290 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2291 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to &lt;a
2292 href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/741407&quot;&gt;a race condition in
2293 vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;, the build might fail without the patch to the
2294 kpartx call.&lt;/p&gt;
2295
2296 &lt;p&gt;If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2297 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2298 the preseed values:&lt;/p&gt;
2299
2300 &lt;pre&gt;
2301 url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat&lt;/a&gt;
2302 &lt;/pre&gt;
2303
2304 &lt;p&gt;But note that due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/740673&quot;&gt;a
2305 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie&lt;/a&gt;, the installer will
2306 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2307 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;apt-cdrom ident&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; process when it hang a few times during the
2308 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2309 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2310
2311 &lt;p&gt;Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2312 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2313 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC (#freedombox on
2314 irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
2315 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
2316 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
2317 </description>
2318         </item>
2319
2320         <item>
2321                 <title>How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
2322                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
2323                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
2324                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2325                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
2326 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
2327 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is
2328 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
2329 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
2330 document this better when one of the customers of
2331 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt;, where I am
2332 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
2333 get this working are the following:&lt;/p&gt;
2334
2335 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;
2336
2337 &lt;li&gt;Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
2338 example host here.&lt;/li&gt;
2339
2340 &lt;li&gt;Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
2341 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.&lt;/li&gt;
2342
2343 &lt;li&gt;Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
2344 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.&lt;/li&gt;
2345
2346 &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2347
2348 &lt;p&gt;DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
2349 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted&quot;&gt;instructions
2350 in the manual&lt;/a&gt; (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
2351 started).&lt;/p&gt;
2352
2353 &lt;p&gt;Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
2354 relevant subnets or machines:&lt;/p&gt;
2355
2356 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2357 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
2358 Export list for nas-server:
2359 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
2360 root@tjener:~#
2361 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2362
2363 &lt;p&gt;Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
2364 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
2365 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
2366 NFS access.&lt;/p&gt;
2367
2368 &lt;p&gt;The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
2369 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
2370 the required LDAP objects using an editor.&lt;/p&gt;
2371
2372 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2373 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD &#39;(cn=admin)&#39; -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2374 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2375
2376 &lt;p&gt;When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
2377 bottom of the document.  The &quot;/&amp;&quot; part in the last LDAP object is a
2378 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
2379 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
2380
2381 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2382 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2383 objectClass: automount
2384 cn: nas-server
2385 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2386
2387 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2388 objectClass: top
2389 objectClass: automountMap
2390 ou: auto.nas-server
2391
2392 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2393 objectClass: automount
2394 cn: /
2395 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&amp;
2396 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2397
2398 &lt;p&gt;The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
2399 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
2400 directories using mkdir and running &quot;mount -a&quot; to mount them.&lt;/p&gt;
2401
2402 &lt;p&gt;When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
2403 the storage server directly by just visiting the
2404 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
2405 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.&lt;/p&gt;
2406 </description>
2407         </item>
2408
2409         <item>
2410                 <title>New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</title>
2411                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</link>
2412                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html</guid>
2413                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Feb 2014 21:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
2414                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2415 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2416 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  I called the project
2417 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2418 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/&quot;&gt;Hungry Programmer&lt;/a&gt; umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2419 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2420 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2421 proper home since then.&lt;/p&gt;
2422
2423 &lt;p&gt;Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2424 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2425 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2426 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Alioth&lt;/a&gt;, but did not have time
2427 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2428
2429 &lt;p&gt;After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2430 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2431 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2432 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2433 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2434 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2435 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&quot;&gt;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/&lt;/a&gt;
2436 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html&quot;&gt;Debian Unstable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2438 </description>
2439         </item>
2440
2441         <item>
2442                 <title>Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</title>
2443                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</link>
2444                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html</guid>
2445                 <pubDate>Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2446                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2447 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2448 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2449 &lt;a href=&quot;https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html&quot;&gt;great
2450 Google Summer of Code work&lt;/a&gt; done last summer by Justus Winter to
2451 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2452 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2453 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&quot;&gt;http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;,
2454 and started it using virt-manager.&lt;/p&gt;
2455
2456 &lt;p&gt;The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2457 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2458 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install&quot;&gt;the
2459 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page&lt;/a&gt; and ran these
2460 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2461 kvm internal DHCP server:&lt;/p&gt;
2462
2463 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2464 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2465 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[p]finet/ { print $2}&#39;)
2466 kill $(ps -ef|awk &#39;/[d]evnode/ { print $2}&#39;)
2467 dhclient /dev/eth0
2468 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2469
2470 &lt;p&gt;After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2471 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2472 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.&lt;/p&gt;
2473
2474 &lt;p&gt;But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2475 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2476 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2477 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2478 side.&lt;/p&gt;
2479
2480 &lt;p&gt;Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2481 stuff:&lt;/p&gt;
2482
2483 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2484 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
2485 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2486 EOF
2487 apt-get update
2488 apt-get dist-upgrade
2489 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2490     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2491 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2492 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2493
2494 &lt;p&gt;To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2495 &lt;tt&gt;reboot-hurd&lt;/tt&gt; instead of just &lt;tt&gt;reboot&lt;/tt&gt;, as there is not
2496 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2497 &#39;reboot&#39; command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2498 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2499 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2500 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2501 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2502 ssh instead.
2503
2504 &lt;p&gt;Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2505 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2506 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2507 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2508 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2509 adding this repository to the machine:&lt;/p&gt;
2510
2511 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2512 cat &gt; /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
2513 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2514 EOF
2515 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2516
2517 &lt;p&gt;At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2518 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2519 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2520 BTS.  This is the completely list of &quot;unofficial&quot; packages installed:&lt;/p&gt;
2521
2522 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2523 # aptitude search &#39;?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))&#39;
2524 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2525 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2526 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2527 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2528 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2529 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2530 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2531 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2532 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2533 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2534 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2535 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2536 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2537 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2538 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2539 #
2540 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2541
2542 &lt;p&gt;All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2543 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2544 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2545 command line stuff.&lt;p&gt;
2546 </description>
2547         </item>
2548
2549         <item>
2550                 <title>A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</title>
2551                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</link>
2552                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</guid>
2553                 <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
2554                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
2555 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
2556 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
2557 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
2558 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
2559 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
2560 investigated in
2561 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;USENIX ;login:&lt;/a&gt;
2562 from December 2013, in the article
2563 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf&quot;&gt;A
2564 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
2565 Names&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
2566 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
2567 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
2568 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
2569 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
2570 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:&lt;/p&gt;
2571
2572 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2573 &lt;p&gt;&quot;To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
2574 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
2575 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
2576 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
2577 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
2578 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
2579 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
2580 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
2581 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
2582 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
2583 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
2584 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).&lt;/p&gt;
2585
2586 &lt;p&gt;As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
2587 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
2588 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
2589 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
2590 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
2591 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
2592 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
2593 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
2594 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
2595 present) seem to be particularly attractive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2596 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
2597
2598 &lt;p&gt;These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
2599 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
2600 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524&quot;&gt;An Analysis of Anonymity in
2601 the Bitcoin System&lt;/A&gt;&quot; by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
2602 summarized like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2603
2604 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2605 &quot;Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
2606 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
2607 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
2608 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
2609 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
2610 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
2611 a user to his or her public-keys on that user&#39;s node only and by
2612 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
2613 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
2614 derived from Bitcoin&#39;s public transaction history. We show that the
2615 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
2616 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
2617 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
2618 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
2619 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
2620 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars.&quot;
2621 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2622
2623 &lt;p&gt;I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
2624 is anonymous.  It isn&#39;t really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
2625 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
2626 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2627
2628 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2629 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2630 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2631 </description>
2632         </item>
2633
2634         <item>
2635                 <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
2636                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
2637                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
2638                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2639                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; is a nice tool to
2640 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2641 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2642 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2643 the source.  The company behind it provide
2644 &lt;a href=&quot;https://scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;check of free software projects as
2645 a community service&lt;/a&gt;, and many hundred free software projects are
2646 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2647 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2648 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/&quot;&gt;gnash&lt;/a&gt; and
2649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/&quot;&gt;ipmitool&lt;/a&gt;
2650 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2651 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2652 check, and decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179&quot;&gt;request
2653 checking of the chrpath project&lt;/a&gt;.  It was
2654 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2655 these were real, mostly resource &quot;leak&quot; when the program detected an
2656 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2657 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2658 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2659 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2660 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel&quot;&gt;a
2661 mailing list for the chrpath developers&lt;/a&gt;, I decided it was time to
2662 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
2663
2664 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:&lt;/p&gt;
2665
2666 &lt;ul&gt;
2667
2668   &lt;li&gt;Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
2669   &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.&lt;/li&gt;
2670   &lt;li&gt;Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.&lt;/li&gt;
2671
2672 &lt;/ul&gt;
2673
2674 &lt;p&gt;You can
2675 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
2676 new version 0.16 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2677 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2678 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2679 include a test suite check.&lt;/p&gt;
2680 </description>
2681         </item>
2682
2683         <item>
2684                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
2685                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>
2686                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
2687                 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2688                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2689 project&lt;/a&gt; consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
2690 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
2691 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
2692 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
2693 to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow&quot;&gt;Dominik
2694 George&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2695
2696 &lt;!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg --&gt;
2697
2698 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2699
2700 &lt;p&gt;I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
2701 life with open source. In &quot;real life&quot;, I am, as already mentioned, a
2702 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
2703 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
2704 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
2705 a bit vacant right now however.&lt;/p&gt;
2706
2707 &lt;p&gt;I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
2708 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
2709 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
2710 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
2711 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
2712 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
2713 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
2714 to help building another school&#39;s informational education concept from
2715 scratch.&lt;/p&gt;
2716
2717 &lt;p&gt;That said, one might see me as a kind of &quot;glue&quot; between school kids
2718 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
2719 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;
2720
2721 &lt;p&gt;When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
2722 and cycling.&lt;/p&gt;
2723
2724 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2725 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2726
2727 &lt;p&gt;I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
2728 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrOSCon&lt;/a&gt; and visited the project
2729 booth. I think I wasn&#39;t too interested back then because I used to
2730 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
2731 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
2732 &quot;out-of-the-box&quot; solution ;).&lt;/p&gt;
2733
2734 &lt;p&gt;The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
2735 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openrheinruhr.de&quot;&gt;OpenRheinRuhr&lt;/a&gt; 2011 when the
2736 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
2737 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
2738 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
2739 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
2740 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
2741 small demonstration, but there wasn&#39;t any real feedback and the guys
2742 seemed rather uninterested.&lt;/p&gt;
2743
2744 &lt;p&gt;After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
2745 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
2746 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
2747 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!&lt;/p&gt;
2748
2749 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2750 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2751
2752 &lt;p&gt;The most important advantage seems to be that it &quot;just
2753 works&quot;. After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
2754 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
2755 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
2756 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn&#39;t
2757 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
2758 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
2759 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
2760 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
2761 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
2762 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
2763 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that&#39;s enough to say
2764 that it rocks!&lt;/p&gt;
2765
2766 &lt;p&gt;Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life&#39;s bad, and so no
2767 politician will ever permit a setup described as &quot;Debian, an universal
2768 operating system, with some really cool educational tools&quot; while they
2769 will be jsut fine with &quot;Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
2770 school network&quot;, even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
2771 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
2772 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;
2773
2774 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2775 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2776
2777 &lt;p&gt;I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
2778 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
2779 other words: &quot;What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?&quot; I
2780 can list a few points about that:&lt;/p&gt;
2781
2782 &lt;ul&gt;
2783
2784  &lt;li&gt;always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
2785  &lt;li&gt;be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
2786  &lt;li&gt;be helpful at being helpful ;)
2787
2788 &lt;/ul&gt;
2789
2790 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!&lt;/p&gt;
2791
2792 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2793
2794 &lt;p&gt;First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
2795 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
2796 year.&lt;/p&gt;
2797
2798 &lt;p&gt;I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
2799 run text tools. I use
2800 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm&quot;&gt;mksh&lt;/a&gt; as shell,
2801 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm&quot;&gt;jupp&lt;/a&gt; as very advanced
2802 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
2803 based full-featured student management software with the two),
2804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcabber.com/&quot;&gt;mcabber&lt;/a&gt; for XMPP and
2805 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irssi.org/&quot;&gt;irssi&lt;/a&gt; for IRC. For that overly
2806 coloured world called the WWW, I use
2807 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/&quot;&gt;Iceweasel
2808 (Firefox)&lt;/a&gt;. Oh, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mutt.org/&quot;&gt;mutt&lt;/a&gt; for
2809 e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;
2810
2811 &lt;p&gt;However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
2812 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
2813 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
2814 kids. One of these things is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jappix.org/&quot;&gt;Jappix&lt;/a&gt;,
2815 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
2816 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
2817 Facebook now ;).&lt;/p&gt;
2818
2819 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2820 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2821
2822 &lt;p&gt;Well, that&#39;s a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
2823 side is what I have experienced.&lt;/p&gt;
2824
2825 &lt;p&gt;I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
2826 that won&#39;t work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
2827 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
2828 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
2829 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
2830 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
2831 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
2832 they jsut refused to use it because &quot;Linux sucks&quot;. It is something
2833 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
2834 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
2835 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
2836 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
2837 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
2838 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
2839 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
2840 plain criminal.&lt;/p&gt;
2841
2842 &lt;p&gt;That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
2843 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
2844 founded an association named
2845 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teckids.org&quot;&gt;Teckids&lt;/a&gt; here in Germany that does
2846 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
2847 area of free and open source software, for example the
2848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrogLabs&lt;/a&gt;, which share staff with
2849 Teckids and are the youth programme of
2850 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;the Free and Open Source Software
2851 Conference (FrOSCon)&lt;/a&gt;. We do a lot more than most other conferences
2852 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
2853 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
2854 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
2855 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.&lt;/p&gt;
2856
2857 &lt;p&gt;Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
2858 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
2859 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
2860 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
2861 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
2862 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
2863 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
2864 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
2865 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
2866 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
2867 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
2868 Skolelinux in the future ;)!&lt;/p&gt;
2869
2870 &lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren&#39;t for the world
2871 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
2872 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
2873 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;
2874
2875 &lt;!--
2876
2877 &gt;  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
2878
2879 That&#39;s probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
2880 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
2881
2882  &lt;li&gt;Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
2883    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
2884    of the decision makers above;
2885  &lt;li&gt;Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
2886    knowledge about free software
2887
2888 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
2889
2890 --&gt;
2891 </description>
2892         </item>
2893
2894         <item>
2895                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
2896                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
2897                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
2898                 <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2899                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
2900 but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
2901 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
2902 had a new school administrator show up on
2903 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; to share
2904 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
2905 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
2906 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
2907 Germany a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;
2908
2909 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2910
2911 &lt;p&gt;I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
2912 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
2913 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
2914 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.&lt;/p&gt;
2915
2916 &lt;p&gt;All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
2917 from teaching, I&#39;m also conducting some more or less experimental
2918 projects like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knoppix.org&quot;&gt;Knoppix GNU/Linux live
2919 system&lt;/a&gt; (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
2920 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html&quot;&gt;ADRIANE&lt;/a&gt;
2921 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
2922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html&quot;&gt;LINBO&lt;/a&gt;
2923 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
2924 system supporting various operating systems).&lt;/p&gt;
2925
2926 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2927 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2928
2929 &lt;p&gt;The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
2930 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
2931 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
2932 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;
2933
2934 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2935 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2936
2937 &lt;ul&gt;
2938   &lt;li&gt;Quick installation,&lt;/li&gt;
2939   &lt;li&gt;works (almost) out of the box,&lt;/li&gt;
2940   &lt;li&gt;contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,&lt;/li&gt;
2941   &lt;li&gt;is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
2942     single company,&lt;/li&gt;
2943   &lt;li&gt;has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
2944     experience and problem solutions.&lt;/li&gt;
2945 &lt;/ul&gt;
2946
2947 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2948 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2949
2950 &lt;ul&gt;
2951   &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
2952   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
2953   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
2954   working again reliably.
2955
2956   &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
2957   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
2958   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
2959   as their base.
2960
2961   &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
2962   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
2963   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
2964   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
2965   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
2966   network configuration to make it &quot;Skolelinux-compatible&quot;.
2967
2968   &lt;li&gt;Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
2969   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
2970   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
2971   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
2972   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
2973   schemes.&lt;/li&gt;
2974
2975   &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
2976   compared to Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
2977
2978 &lt;/ul&gt;
2979
2980 &lt;p&gt;For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
2981 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
2982 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
2983 upgradeable without reinstallation.&lt;/p&gt;
2984
2985 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2986
2987 &lt;p&gt;GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
2988 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
2989 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
2990 programming languages for teaching.&lt;/p&gt;
2991
2992 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2993 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2994
2995 &lt;p&gt;Strong arguments are&lt;/p&gt;
2996
2997 &lt;ul&gt;
2998
2999   &lt;li&gt;Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
3000     teaching and learning.&lt;/li&gt;
3001
3002   &lt;li&gt;Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
3003     home, and at their working place without running into license or
3004     conversion problems.&lt;/li&gt;
3005
3006   &lt;li&gt;Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
3007     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
3008     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
3009     science, not products.&lt;/li&gt;
3010
3011   &lt;li&gt;If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
3012     would you need proprietary software for?&lt;/li&gt;
3013
3014 &lt;/ul&gt;
3015 </description>
3016         </item>
3017
3018         <item>
3019                 <title>Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</title>
3020                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</link>
3021                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html</guid>
3022                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Nov 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
3023                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
3024 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
3025 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
3026 experiment with interesting network technology, the
3027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dugnadsnett.no/&quot;&gt;Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
3028 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
3029 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
3030 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
3031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://freifunk.net/&quot;&gt;Freifunk&lt;/a&gt;,
3032 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awmn.net/&quot;&gt;Athens Wireless Metropolitan
3033 Network&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet&quot;&gt;Roofnet&lt;/a&gt;
3034 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
3035 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
3036 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
3037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;dugnadsnett
3038 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; and IRC channel
3039 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no&quot;&gt;#dugnadsnett.no&lt;/a&gt; to
3040 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
3041 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml&quot;&gt;announcing
3042 the mailing list and IRC channel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3043 </description>
3044         </item>
3045
3046         <item>
3047                 <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
3048                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
3049                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
3050                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
3051                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3052 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3053 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3054 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3055 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3056 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3057 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3058 is working on.  I checked the
3059 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
3060 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
3061 &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
3062 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3063 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3064 These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
3065
3066 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;
3067
3068 &lt;ul&gt;
3069
3070   &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3071    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3072    up.&lt;/li&gt;
3073
3074   &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;
3075
3076   &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3077    Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;
3078
3079   &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3080    Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;
3081
3082   &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3083    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3084    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;
3085
3086 &lt;/ul&gt;
3087
3088 &lt;p&gt;You can
3089 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
3090 new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3091 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3092 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3093 include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
3094 </description>
3095         </item>
3096
3097         <item>
3098                 <title>All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</title>
3099                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</link>
3100                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html</guid>
3101                 <pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3102                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
3103 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
3104 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
3105 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
3106 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
3107 is just a question of time before &quot;bad drones&quot; are in the hands of
3108 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
3109 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
3110 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
3111 TED talk
3112 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G&quot;&gt;The kill
3113 decision shouldn&#39;t belong to a robot&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, where he suggested this
3114 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:&lt;/p&gt;
3115
3116 &lt;blockquote&gt;
3117
3118 &lt;p&gt;Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
3119 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
3120 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
3121 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
3122 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
3123 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
3124 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
3125 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
3126 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
3127 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
3128 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.&lt;/p&gt;
3129
3130 &lt;p&gt;But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
3131 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
3132 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.&lt;/p&gt;
3133
3134 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
3135
3136 &lt;p&gt;The key is that &lt;em&gt;every citizen&lt;/em&gt; should be able to read the
3137 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3138 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
3139 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
3140 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3141 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3142 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3143 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
3144 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.&lt;/p&gt;
3145 </description>
3146         </item>
3147
3148         <item>
3149                 <title>Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</title>
3150                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</link>
3151                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html</guid>
3152                 <pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3153                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml&quot;&gt;our
3155 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3156 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
3157 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3158 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
3159 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson&quot;&gt;9
3160 locations plotted on the map&lt;/a&gt;, but we will need more before we have
3161 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
3162 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
3163 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3164 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug&quot;&gt;#nuug on irc.freenode.net&lt;/a&gt;
3165 right away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3166 </description>
3167         </item>
3168
3169         <item>
3170                 <title>Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</title>
3171                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</link>
3172                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html</guid>
3173                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3174                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
3175 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
3176 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
3177 MR3040 as a mesh node using
3178 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openwrt.org/&quot;&gt;OpenWrt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3179
3180 &lt;p&gt;I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
3181 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040&quot;&gt;TL-MR3040&lt;/a&gt;,
3182 and downloaded
3183 &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin&quot;&gt;the
3184 recommended firmware image&lt;/a&gt;
3185 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
3186 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
3187 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
3188 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
3189 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.&lt;/p&gt;
3190
3191 &lt;p&gt;I started off by reading the instructions from
3192 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine&#39;s_Research&quot;&gt;Wireless
3193 Africa&lt;/a&gt;, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
3194 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
3195 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config&quot;&gt;using
3196 batman-adv on OpenWrt&lt;/a&gt;.  A small snag was the fact that the
3197 &lt;tt&gt;opkg install kmod-batman-adv&lt;/tt&gt; command did not work as it
3198 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
3199 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
3200 &lt;a href=&quot;https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452&quot;&gt;reported the bug&lt;/a&gt; to
3201 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
3202 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
3203 seem to work when booting from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;
3204
3205 &lt;p&gt;The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
3206 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
3207 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
3208 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
3209 them:&lt;/p&gt;
3210
3211 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/network&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3212
3213 &lt;pre&gt;
3214
3215 config interface &#39;loopback&#39;
3216         option ifname &#39;lo&#39;
3217         option proto &#39;static&#39;
3218         option ipaddr &#39;127.0.0.1&#39;
3219         option netmask &#39;255.0.0.0&#39;
3220
3221 config globals &#39;globals&#39;
3222         option ula_prefix &#39;fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48&#39;
3223
3224 config interface &#39;lan&#39;
3225         option ifname &#39;eth0&#39;
3226         option type &#39;bridge&#39;
3227         option proto &#39;dhcp&#39;
3228         option ipaddr &#39;192.168.1.1&#39;
3229         option netmask &#39;255.255.255.0&#39;
3230         option hostname &#39;tl-mr3040&#39;
3231         option ip6assign &#39;60&#39;
3232
3233 config interface &#39;mesh&#39;
3234         option ifname &#39;adhoc0&#39;
3235         option mtu &#39;1528&#39;
3236         option proto &#39;batadv&#39;
3237         option mesh &#39;bat0&#39;
3238 &lt;/pre&gt;
3239
3240 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/wireless&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3241 &lt;pre&gt;
3242
3243 config wifi-device &#39;radio0&#39;
3244         option type &#39;mac80211&#39;
3245         option channel &#39;11&#39;
3246         option hwmode &#39;11ng&#39;
3247         option path &#39;platform/ar933x_wmac&#39;
3248         option htmode &#39;HT20&#39;
3249         list ht_capab &#39;SHORT-GI-20&#39;
3250         list ht_capab &#39;SHORT-GI-40&#39;
3251         list ht_capab &#39;RX-STBC1&#39;
3252         list ht_capab &#39;DSSS_CCK-40&#39;
3253         option disabled &#39;0&#39;
3254
3255 config wifi-iface &#39;wmesh&#39;
3256         option device &#39;radio0&#39;
3257         option ifname &#39;adhoc0&#39;
3258         option network &#39;mesh&#39;
3259         option encryption &#39;none&#39;
3260         option mode &#39;adhoc&#39;
3261         option bssid &#39;02:BA:00:00:00:01&#39;
3262         option ssid &#39;meshfx@hackeriet&#39;
3263 &lt;/pre&gt;
3264 &lt;p&gt;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/config/batman-adv&lt;/tt&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3265 &lt;pre&gt;
3266
3267 config &#39;mesh&#39; &#39;bat0&#39;
3268         option interfaces &#39;adhoc0&#39;
3269         option &#39;aggregated_ogms&#39;
3270         option &#39;ap_isolation&#39;
3271         option &#39;bonding&#39;
3272         option &#39;fragmentation&#39;
3273         option &#39;gw_bandwidth&#39;
3274         option &#39;gw_mode&#39;
3275         option &#39;gw_sel_class&#39;
3276         option &#39;log_level&#39;
3277         option &#39;orig_interval&#39;
3278         option &#39;vis_mode&#39;
3279         option &#39;bridge_loop_avoidance&#39;
3280         option &#39;distributed_arp_table&#39;
3281         option &#39;network_coding&#39;
3282         option &#39;hop_penalty&#39;
3283
3284 # yet another batX instance
3285 # config &#39;mesh&#39; &#39;bat5&#39;
3286 #       option &#39;interfaces&#39; &#39;second_mesh&#39;
3287 &lt;/pre&gt;
3288
3289 &lt;p&gt;The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
3290 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
3291 still wrapped up in plastic.&lt;/p&gt;
3292 </description>
3293         </item>
3294
3295         <item>
3296                 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
3297                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
3298                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
3299                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3300                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3301 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
3302 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3303 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3304 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
3305
3306 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3307 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3308 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3309 # Provides:          rsyslog
3310 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3311 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3312 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3313 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3314 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3315 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3316 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3317 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3318 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3319 ### END INIT INFO
3320 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
3321 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3322 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3323
3324 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3325 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3326 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
3327
3328 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3329 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3330
3331 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3332 #!/bin/sh
3333
3334 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3335 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3336 # and status_of_proc is working.
3337 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3338
3339 #
3340 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3341
3342 #
3343 do_start()
3344 {
3345         # Return
3346         #   0 if daemon has been started
3347         #   1 if daemon was already running
3348         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3349         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
3350                 || return 1
3351         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3352                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3353                 || return 2
3354         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3355         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3356         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3357 }
3358
3359 #
3360 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3361 #
3362 do_stop()
3363 {
3364         # Return
3365         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3366         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3367         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3368         #   other if a failure occurred
3369         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3370         RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
3371         [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
3372         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3373         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3374         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3375         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3376         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3377         # sleep for some time.
3378         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3379         [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
3380         # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3381         rm -f $PIDFILE
3382         return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
3383 }
3384
3385 #
3386 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3387 #
3388 do_reload() {
3389         #
3390         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3391         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3392         # then implement that here.
3393         #
3394         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3395         return 0
3396 }
3397
3398 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3399 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
3400 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
3401 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
3402     script=&quot;$1&quot;
3403     shift
3404     . $script
3405 else
3406     exit 0
3407 fi
3408
3409 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3410 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3411
3412 # Exit if the package is not installed
3413 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
3414
3415 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3416 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
3417
3418 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3419 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3420
3421 case &quot;$1&quot; in
3422   start)
3423         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
3424         do_start
3425         case &quot;$?&quot; in
3426                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
3427                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
3428         esac
3429         ;;
3430   stop)
3431         [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
3432         do_stop
3433         case &quot;$?&quot; in
3434                 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
3435                 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
3436         esac
3437         ;;
3438   status)
3439         status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
3440         ;;
3441   #reload|force-reload)
3442         #
3443         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3444         # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
3445         #
3446         #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
3447         #do_reload
3448         #log_end_msg $?
3449         #;;
3450   restart|force-reload)
3451         #
3452         # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
3453         # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
3454         #
3455         log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
3456         do_stop
3457         case &quot;$?&quot; in
3458           0|1)
3459                 do_start
3460                 case &quot;$?&quot; in
3461                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3462                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3463                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3464                 esac
3465                 ;;
3466           *)
3467                 # Failed to stop
3468                 log_end_msg 1
3469                 ;;
3470         esac
3471         ;;
3472   *)
3473         echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
3474         exit 3
3475         ;;
3476 esac
3477
3478 :
3479 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3480
3481 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3482 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3483 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3484 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
3485
3486 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3487 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3488 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3489 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3490 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
3491 </description>
3492         </item>
3493
3494         <item>
3495                 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
3496                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
3497                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
3498                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3499                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
3500 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3501 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3502 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3503 missing in Debian.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
3504 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3505 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3506 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3507 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3508 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3509 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3510 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
3511
3512 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
3513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3514 </description>
3515         </item>
3516
3517         <item>
3518                 <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
3519                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
3520                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
3521                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3522                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The
3523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
3524 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3525 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3526 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3527 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3528 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, as part
3529 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3530 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the FreedomBox
3531 project&lt;/a&gt;.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3532 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3533 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3534 Raspberry Pi.&lt;/p&gt;
3535
3536 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the knowledge on how to build &quot;foreign&quot; (aka non-native
3537 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3538 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3539 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3540 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3541 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html&quot;&gt;Debian
3542 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;.  First, the
3543 &lt;tt&gt;--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler&lt;/tt&gt; option tell vmdebootstrap to
3544 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3545 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3546 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3547 two new options &lt;tt&gt;--bootsize size&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;--boottype
3548 fstype&lt;/tt&gt; to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3549 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3550 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a &lt;tt&gt;--variant
3551 variant&lt;/tt&gt; option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3552 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3553 &lt;tt&gt;--no-extlinux&lt;/tt&gt; to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3554 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3555 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3556 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3557 available from
3558 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/&quot;&gt;the
3559 upstream project page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3560
3561 &lt;p&gt;To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3562 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3563 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3564 list:&lt;/p&gt;
3565
3566 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3567 #!/bin/sh
3568 set -e # Exit on first error
3569 rootdir=&quot;$1&quot;
3570 cd &quot;$rootdir&quot;
3571 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF &gt; etc/apt/sources.list
3572 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3573 EOF
3574 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3575 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3576 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3577     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3578 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3579 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3580 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3581 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3582 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3583
3584 &lt;p&gt;Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3585 to build the image:&lt;/p&gt;
3586
3587 &lt;pre&gt;
3588 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3589     --variant minbase \
3590     --arch armel \
3591     --distribution jessie \
3592     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3593     --image test.img \
3594     --size 600M \
3595     --bootsize 64M \
3596     --boottype vfat \
3597     --log-level debug \
3598     --verbose \
3599     --no-kernel \
3600     --no-extlinux \
3601     --root-password raspberry \
3602     --hostname raspberrypi \
3603     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3604     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3605     --package netbase \
3606     --package git-core \
3607     --package binutils \
3608     --package ca-certificates \
3609     --package wget \
3610     --package kmod
3611 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3612
3613 &lt;p&gt;The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3614 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3615 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3616 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3617 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3618 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3619 using a non-free binary blob.&lt;/p&gt;
3620
3621 &lt;p&gt;The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3622 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3623 build dependency list.&lt;/p&gt;
3624
3625 &lt;p&gt;The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3626 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3627 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3628 than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; based images.&lt;/p&gt;
3629 </description>
3630         </item>
3631
3632         <item>
3633                 <title>A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</title>
3634                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</link>
3635                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html</guid>
3636                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3637                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been experimenting with
3638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki&quot;&gt;the
3639 batman-adv mesh technology&lt;/a&gt;.  I want to gain some experience to see
3640 if it will fit &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the
3641 Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;, and together with my neighbors try to build a
3642 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
3643 mesh system (&quot;ethernet&quot; in other words), where the mesh network appear
3644 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.&lt;/p&gt;
3645
3646 &lt;p&gt;My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
3647 around, but I&#39;ve been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
3648 instead, I started playing with a
3649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org/&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, and tried to
3650 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
3651 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
3652 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
3653 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
3654 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
3655 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
3656 Android phones using &lt;a href=&quot;http://servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;the Serval
3657 Project&lt;/a&gt; voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
3658 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
3659 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
3660 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
3661 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
3662 every client on the local network.&lt;/p&gt;
3663
3664 &lt;p&gt;To get this working, I&#39;ve created a debian package
3665 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node&quot;&gt;meshfx-node&lt;/a&gt;
3666 and a script
3667 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node&quot;&gt;build-rpi-mesh-node&lt;/a&gt;
3668 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I&#39;m using Debian Jessie (and
3669 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
3670 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
3671 image to get it booting, but I&#39;ll ignore that for now.  Also, as
3672 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
3673 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
3674 the routing performance isn&#39;t affected by the lack of hardware FPU
3675 support.&lt;/p&gt;
3676
3677 &lt;p&gt;To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
3678 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:&lt;/p&gt;
3679
3680 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3681 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
3682     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
3683 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node &gt; build.log 2&gt;&amp;1
3684 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
3685 %
3686 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3687
3688 &lt;p&gt;Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
3689 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
3690 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
3691 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
3692 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html&quot;&gt;an
3693 earlier blog post about this mesh testing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3694
3695 &lt;p&gt;The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
3696 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
3697 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:&lt;/p&gt;
3698
3699 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
3700
3701 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Supplier&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Model&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;NOK&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3702 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Teknikkmagasinet&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Raspberry Pi model B&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;349.90&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3703 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Teknikkmagasinet&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Raspberry Pi type B case&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;99.90&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3704 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Lefdal&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Jensen Air:Link 25150&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;295.-&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3705 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Clas Ohlson&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Kingston 16 GB SD card&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;199.-&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3706 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Total cost&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;943.80&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3707
3708 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3709
3710 &lt;p&gt;Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
3711 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
3712 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
3713 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
3714 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
3715 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
3716 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3717 </description>
3718         </item>
3719
3720         <item>
3721                 <title>Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</title>
3722                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</link>
3723                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html</guid>
3724                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Oct 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3725                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
3726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee&quot;&gt;the Spykee robot&lt;/a&gt;
3727 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
3728 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
3729 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
3730 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
3731 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl&quot;&gt;the
3732 libspykee-perl github repository&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3733 </description>
3734         </item>
3735
3736         <item>
3737                 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
3738                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
3739                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
3740                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3741                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3742 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3743 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3744
3745 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
3746 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
3747 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3748 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3749 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
3750 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3751 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3752
3753 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3754 create &lt;a href=&quot;https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos&quot;&gt;video
3755 documentaries about the excessive spying&lt;/a&gt; on every Internet user that
3756 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I&#39;ve already
3757 donated.  Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
3758
3759 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3760 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3761 statement under the heading
3762 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
3763 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3764 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3765 too.&lt;/p&gt;
3766 </description>
3767         </item>
3768
3769         <item>
3770                 <title>Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</title>
3771                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</link>
3772                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</guid>
3773                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
3774                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
3775 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
3776 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
3777 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
3778 successful examples like
3779 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freifunk.net/&quot;&gt;Freifunk&lt;/a&gt; and
3780 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awmn.net/&quot;&gt;Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network&lt;/a&gt;
3781 (see
3782 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece&quot;&gt;wikipedia
3783 for a large list&lt;/a&gt;) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
3784 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
3785 can be seen from their
3786 &lt;a href=&quot;http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html&quot;&gt;dynamically
3787 updated node graph and map&lt;/a&gt;, where one can see how the mesh nodes
3788 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
3789 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
3790 and that is the main topic of this blog post.&lt;/p&gt;
3791
3792 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
3793 to do it as part of my involvement with the &lt;a
3794 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG member organisation&lt;/a&gt; community, and
3795 my recent involvement in
3796 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
3797 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
3798 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
3799 when possible, given that most communication between people are
3800 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
3801 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
3802 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
3803 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
3804 important over the years.&lt;/p&gt;
3805
3806 &lt;p&gt;So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
3807 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
3808 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hackeriet.no/&quot;&gt;Hackeriet&lt;/a&gt; at Husmania.  They seem to
3809 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
3810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page&quot;&gt;the Oslo
3811 Freifunk project&lt;/a&gt;, but that effort is now dead and the people
3812 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
3813 &lt;a href=&quot;http://meshfx.org/trac&quot;&gt;meshfx&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately the wiki
3814 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
3815 reflect this fact, so the old project page can&#39;t be updated to point to
3816 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
3817 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
3818 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
3819 speakers about this talk (from
3820 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;
3821
3822 &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3823
3824 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
3825 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
3826 figure out which one would be &quot;best&quot; for some definitions of best, but
3827 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
3828 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
3829 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
3830 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
3831 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;Serval project in Australia&lt;/a&gt;
3832 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
3833 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
3834 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
3835 that project (from
3836 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;
3837
3838 &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3839
3840 &lt;p&gt;According to the wikipedia page on
3841 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network&quot;&gt;Wireless
3842 mesh network&lt;/a&gt; there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
3843 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
3844 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
3845 based community mesh networks.&lt;/p&gt;
3846
3847 &lt;p&gt;The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
3848 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
3849 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
3850 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
3851 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
3852 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
3853 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide&quot;&gt;good
3854 introduction&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
3855 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:&lt;/p&gt;
3856
3857 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
3858 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Setting&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Value&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3859 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Protocol / kernel module&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;batman-adv&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3860 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;ESSID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;meshfx@hackeriet&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3861 &lt;td&gt;Channel / Frequency&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;11 / 2462&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
3862 &lt;td&gt;Cell ID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;02:BA:00:00:00:01&lt;/td&gt;
3863 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3864
3865 &lt;p&gt;The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
3866 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
3867 VillageTelco about
3868 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html&quot;&gt;Information
3869 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!&lt;/a&gt;
3870 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
3871 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
3872 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
3873 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3874
3875 &lt;p&gt;My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
3876 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
3877 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
3878 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
3879
3880 &lt;p&gt;If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
3881 us on IRC, either channel
3882 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace&quot;&gt;#oslohackerspace&lt;/a&gt;
3883 or &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug&quot;&gt;#nuug&lt;/a&gt; on
3884 irc.freenode.net.&lt;/p&gt;
3885
3886 &lt;p&gt;While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
3887 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
3888 and Innovation called
3889 &lt;a href=&quot;http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf&quot;&gt;The
3890 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere
3891 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
3892 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
3893 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
3894 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
3895 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
3896 be interested in a cooperation?&lt;/p&gt;
3897
3898 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-10-12&lt;/strong&gt;: I was just
3899 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html&quot;&gt;told
3900 by the Serval project developers&lt;/a&gt; that they no longer use
3901 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
3902 mesh system.&lt;/p&gt;
3903 </description>
3904         </item>
3905
3906         <item>
3907                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</title>
3908                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</link>
3909                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</guid>
3910                 <pubDate>Tue, 8 Oct 2013 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
3911                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
3912 Salvador had published a
3913 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc&quot;&gt;video on
3914 Youtube&lt;/a&gt; showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
3915 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
3916 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
3917 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
3918 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
3919 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
3920 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
3921 showing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zygotebody.com/&quot;&gt;Zygote Body 3D model
3922 of the human body&lt;/a&gt;, but I guess he did not know about those or find
3923 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
3924 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
3925 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
3926 computers without hard drives by installing one central
3927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ltsp.org/&quot;&gt;LTSP server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3928
3929 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:&lt;/p&gt;
3930
3931 &lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
3932
3933 &lt;p&gt;Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
3934 me know. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3935 </description>
3936         </item>
3937
3938         <item>
3939                 <title>Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</title>
3940                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</link>
3941                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</guid>
3942                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3943                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
3944 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
3945 complete announcement text can be found at
3946 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928&quot;&gt;the Debian News
3947 section&lt;/a&gt;, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.&lt;/p&gt;
3948
3949 &lt;p&gt;There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
3950 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
3951 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
3952 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).&lt;/p&gt;
3953 </description>
3954         </item>
3955
3956         <item>
3957                 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
3958                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
3959                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
3960                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
3961                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
3962 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3963 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3964 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
3965
3966 &lt;ul&gt;
3967
3968 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
3969 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3970
3971 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
3972 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3973
3974 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
3975 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3976 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
3977 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3978
3979 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
3980 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3981
3982 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
3983 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3984
3985 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
3986 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3987 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3988
3989 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
3990 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
3991 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
3992
3993 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
3994 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
3995
3996 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
3997 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
3998
3999 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
4000 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4001 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
4002
4003 &lt;/ul&gt;
4004
4005 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
4006 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
4007 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4008
4009 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4010 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4011 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4012 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4013 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4014 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4015 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4016 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
4017 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
4018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
4019 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
4020 </description>
4021         </item>
4022
4023         <item>
4024                 <title>Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</title>
4025                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html</link>
4026                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html</guid>
4027                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4028                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4029 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:&lt;/p&gt;
4030
4031 &lt;blockquote&gt;
4032 &lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
4033
4034 &lt;p&gt;it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
4035 short) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
4036 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Debian Wheezy!&lt;/p&gt;
4037
4038 &lt;p&gt;Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
4039 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
4040 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
4041 if you find something, please notify us immediately!&lt;/p&gt;
4042
4043 &lt;p&gt;(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
4044 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)&lt;/p&gt;
4045
4046 &lt;p&gt;Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
4047 compared to beta1:&lt;/p&gt;
4048
4049 &lt;ul&gt;
4050
4051 &lt;li&gt;The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
4052 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.&lt;/li&gt;
4053 &lt;li&gt;Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
4054 understand ical/dav sources.&lt;/li&gt;
4055 &lt;li&gt;Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
4056 main server.&lt;/li&gt;
4057 &lt;li&gt;A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.&lt;/li&gt;
4058 &lt;li&gt;Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
4059 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
4060 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
4061 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).&lt;/li&gt;
4062
4063 &lt;/ul&gt;
4064
4065 &lt;p&gt;Where to get it:&lt;/p&gt;
4066
4067 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4068
4069 &lt;ul&gt;
4070 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4071 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4072 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4073 &lt;/ul&gt;
4074
4075 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f&lt;/p&gt;
4076
4077 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
4078 &lt;ul&gt;
4079 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4080 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4081 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4082 &lt;/ul&gt;
4083
4084 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e&lt;/p&gt;
4085
4086 &lt;p&gt;The Source DVD image has the filename
4087 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
4088 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
4089 as the other isos.&lt;/p&gt;
4090
4091 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/p&gt;
4092
4093 &lt;p&gt;For information how to report bugs please see
4094 &lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4095
4096
4097 &lt;p&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/p&gt;
4098
4099 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4100 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4101 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
4102 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4103 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4104 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4105 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
4106 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
4107 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
4108 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
4109 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
4110 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
4111 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
4112
4113 &lt;p&gt;This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4114 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4115 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
4116
4117 &lt;p&gt;Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases&lt;/p&gt;
4118
4119 &lt;p&gt;Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4120 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4121 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4122 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4123 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
4124 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
4125 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
4126 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
4127 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
4128 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
4129
4130
4131 &lt;p&gt;cheers,
4132 &lt;br&gt;        Holger&lt;/p&gt;
4133 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
4134 </description>
4135         </item>
4136
4137         <item>
4138                 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
4139                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
4140                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
4141                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4142                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
4143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
4144 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
4145 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
4146 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
4147 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
4148 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
4149 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
4150 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
4151
4152 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
4153 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
4154 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
4155 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
4156 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
4157
4158 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
4159 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
4160 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
4161 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
4162 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
4163 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
4164 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
4165 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
4166 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
4167 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
4168 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
4169 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
4170 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
4171 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
4172 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
4173
4174 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
4175 scripts
4176 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
4177 and a administrative web interface
4178 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
4179 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
4180 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
4181 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
4182 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
4183 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
4184 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;).  The
4185 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
4186 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
4187 this is really working yet, see
4188 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
4189 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
4190 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
4191 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
4192 users.  I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
4193 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
4194 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
4195
4196 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
4197 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
4198 at.&lt;/p&gt;
4199
4200 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4201
4202 &lt;ol&gt;
4203
4204 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
4205 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
4206 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
4207 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
4208 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4209
4210 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
4211 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
4212
4213 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
4214 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
4215
4216 &lt;/ol&gt;
4217
4218 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4219
4220 &lt;ol&gt;
4221
4222 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
4223 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
4224 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
4225 &lt;pre&gt;
4226 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
4227 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4228 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
4229 &lt;pre&gt;
4230 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
4231    apt-key add -
4232 apt-get update
4233 apt-get install freedombox-setup
4234 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
4235 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4236 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
4237
4238 &lt;/ol&gt;
4239
4240 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
4241 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
4242 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
4243 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
4244 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4245
4246 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
4247 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
4248 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
4249 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
4250
4251 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
4252 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
4253 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
4254 irc.debian.org and the
4255 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
4256 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4257
4258 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
4259 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
4260 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
4261 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
4262 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
4263 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
4264 </description>
4265         </item>
4266
4267         <item>
4268                 <title>Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
4269                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
4270                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
4271                 <pubDate>Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4272                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4273 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
4274 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
4275
4276 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4277
4278 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4279 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4280
4281 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4282
4283 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
4284 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4285 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4286 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4287 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4288 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4289 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4290 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
4291 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4292 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4293 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4294 desktop contains
4295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
4296 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
4297 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4298 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
4299
4300 &lt;p&gt;This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
4301 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
4302 release.&lt;/p&gt;
4303
4304 &lt;p&gt;ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4305 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4306 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4307 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4308 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
4309 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html&quot;&gt;on
4310 the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
4311 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
4312 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
4313 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
4314 CIFS access to their home directory.&lt;/p&gt;
4315
4316 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4317
4318 &lt;ul&gt;
4319
4320 &lt;li&gt;Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
4321     work also without a attached tty.&lt;/li&gt;
4322 &lt;li&gt;Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
4323     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
4324     tools. Please note, that the command &#39;update-command-not-found&#39;
4325     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
4326     required).&lt;/li&gt;
4327
4328 &lt;/ul&gt;
4329
4330 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4331
4332 &lt;ul&gt;
4333
4334 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
4335 needed for desktop=xfce installations.&lt;/li&gt;
4336 &lt;li&gt;Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
4337 stick ISO image.&lt;/li&gt;
4338 &lt;li&gt;Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).&lt;/li&gt;
4339 &lt;li&gt;Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.&lt;/li&gt;
4340 &lt;li&gt;Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
4341     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
4342     cope with this.&lt;/li&gt;
4343 &lt;li&gt;Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².&lt;/li&gt;
4344 &lt;li&gt;Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
4345     empty password hashes.&lt;/li&gt;
4346 &lt;li&gt;Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
4347     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
4348     from joining the Samba domain.&lt;/li&gt;
4349
4350 &lt;/ul&gt;
4351
4352 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4353
4354 &lt;ul&gt;
4355
4356 &lt;li&gt;KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4357     not use the http proxy as it should.&lt;/li&gt;
4358 &lt;li&gt;Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
4359     (using the KDE configuration).&lt;/li&gt;
4360
4361 &lt;/ul&gt;
4362
4363 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4364
4365 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4366
4367 &lt;ul&gt;
4368
4369 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4370
4371 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4372
4373 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4374
4375 &lt;/ul&gt;
4376
4377 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
4378 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2&lt;/p&gt;
4379
4380 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4381
4382 &lt;ul&gt;
4383
4384 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4385 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4386 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4387
4388 &lt;/ul&gt;
4389
4390 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
4391 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119&lt;/p&gt;
4392
4393
4394 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4395
4396 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
4397 </description>
4398         </item>
4399
4400         <item>
4401                 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
4402                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
4403                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
4404                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4405                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
4406 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
4407 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;.  Friday I was
4408 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
4409 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
4410 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
4411 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
4412
4413 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
4414 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
4415 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
4416 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
4417 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
4418 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
4419 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
4420 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
4421 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
4422 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
4423 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
4424 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
4425 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
4426 </description>
4427         </item>
4428
4429         <item>
4430                 <title>90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</title>
4431                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
4432                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
4433                 <pubDate>Fri, 2 Aug 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4434                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
4435 have worked on a Norwegian
4436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
4437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
4438 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
4439 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
4440 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
4441 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
4442 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
4443 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
4444 progress of the translation:&lt;/p&gt;
4445
4446 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4447
4448 &lt;p&gt;When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
4449 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
4450 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
4451 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
4452 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
4453 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
4454 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
4455 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
4456 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
4457 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
4458 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
4459
4460 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
4461 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
4462 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
4463 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
4464 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
4465 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
4466 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
4467 project files currently available from
4468 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4469
4470 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
4471 the updated
4472 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
4473 and
4474 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
4475 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
4476 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
4477 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
4478 </description>
4479         </item>
4480
4481         <item>
4482                 <title>First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
4483                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
4484                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
4485                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4486                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4487 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
4488
4489 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
4490 2013-07-27&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4491
4492 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4493 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4494
4495 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4496
4497 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
4498 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4499 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4500 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4501 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4502 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4503 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4504 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4505 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4506 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4507 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4508 desktop contains
4509 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
4510 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
4511 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4512 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
4513
4514 &lt;p&gt;This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4515 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4516 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
4517
4518 &lt;p&gt;ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4519 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4520 release.&lt;/p&gt;
4521
4522 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4523
4524 &lt;ul&gt;
4525
4526 &lt;li&gt;Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
4527    for network configuration, as wicd didn&#39;t work any more.&lt;/li&gt;
4528 &lt;li&gt;Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
4529    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
4530    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
4531    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
4532    and libpam-mklocaluser.&lt;/li&gt;
4533 &lt;li&gt;Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).&lt;/li&gt;
4534 &lt;li&gt;Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).&lt;/li&gt;
4535 &lt;li&gt;Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
4536    crash bugs.&lt;/li&gt;
4537
4538 &lt;/ul&gt;
4539
4540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4541
4542 &lt;ul&gt;
4543
4544 &lt;li&gt;Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
4545    desktop=gnome installations.&lt;/li&gt;
4546 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
4547    netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
4548 &lt;li&gt;Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
4549    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.&lt;/li&gt;
4550 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
4551    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
4552    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.&lt;/li&gt;
4553 &lt;li&gt;Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
4554    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
4555    name setting at run time to work again.&lt;/li&gt;
4556 &lt;li&gt;Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
4557    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
4558    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.&lt;/li&gt;
4559 &lt;li&gt;Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
4560    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.&lt;/li&gt;
4561 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.&lt;/li&gt;
4562
4563 &lt;/ul&gt;
4564
4565 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4566
4567 &lt;ul&gt;
4568
4569 &lt;li&gt;Grub is missing the new artwork.&lt;/li&gt;
4570 &lt;li&gt;KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4571     not use the http proxy as it should.&lt;/li&gt;
4572 &lt;li&gt;Chromium also fail to use the proxy.&lt;/li&gt;
4573
4574 &lt;/ul&gt;
4575
4576 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4577
4578 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4579
4580 &lt;ul&gt;
4581
4582 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4583
4584 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4585
4586 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4587
4588 &lt;/ul&gt;
4589
4590 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
4591 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f&lt;/p&gt;
4592
4593 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4594
4595 &lt;ul&gt;
4596
4597 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4598 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4599 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4600
4601 &lt;/ul&gt;
4602
4603 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
4604 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733&lt;/p&gt;
4605
4606
4607 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4608
4609 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
4610 </description>
4611         </item>
4612
4613         <item>
4614                 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
4615                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
4616                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
4617                 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4618                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
4619 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
4620 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;.  I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
4621 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
4622 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
4623 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
4624 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
4625 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
4626 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
4627 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
4628 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
4629 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
4630 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
4631 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
4632 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
4633 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
4634
4635 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
4636 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
4637 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
4638 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
4639 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
4640 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning.  The
4641 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
4642 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
4643 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
4644 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
4645 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
4646 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
4647
4648 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
4649 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
4650 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
4651 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
4652 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
4653 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
4654 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
4655
4656 &lt;ul&gt;
4657
4658 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
4659     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
4660
4661 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
4662     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
4663     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
4664
4665 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
4666     systems.&lt;/li&gt;
4667
4668 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
4669     /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
4670
4671 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
4672
4673 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
4674     cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
4675
4676 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
4677     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
4678
4679 &lt;/ul&gt;
4680
4681 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
4682 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
4683 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
4684 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
4685 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
4686 from getting the data on the disk (see
4687 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
4688 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
4689 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
4690
4691 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
4692 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
4693 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
4694
4695 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
4696 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
4697 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
4698 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
4699
4700 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
4701 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4702
4703 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
4704 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
4705 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
4706
4707 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
4708 there.&lt;/p&gt;
4709
4710 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
4711 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
4712 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
4713 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
4714 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
4715 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
4716 back.&lt;/p&gt;
4717 </description>
4718         </item>
4719
4720         <item>
4721                 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
4722                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
4723                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
4724                 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4725                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
4726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
4727 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
4728 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
4729 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
4730 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
4731 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
4732 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
4733
4734 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
4735 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
4736 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
4737 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
4738 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
4739 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
4740 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
4741 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
4742 lock up when I download a new
4743 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
4744 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
4745 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
4746
4747 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4748 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
4749 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4750 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4751 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4752 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
4753
4754 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4755 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4756 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4757 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4758 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4759 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
4760
4761 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4762 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4763 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4764 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4765 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
4766 </description>
4767         </item>
4768
4769         <item>
4770                 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
4771                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
4772                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
4773                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
4774                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4775 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4776 party in Oslo.  It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
4777 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
4778 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4779 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
4780 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4781
4782 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4783 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4784 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4785 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
4786 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
4787 </description>
4788         </item>
4789
4790         <item>
4791                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
4792                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
4793                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
4794                 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4795                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4796 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
4797 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4798 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4799 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4800 ended up picking a
4801 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
4802 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4803 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4804 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4805 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
4806
4807 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4808 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4809 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4810 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
4811 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4812 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4813 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4814 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4815 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
4816
4817 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4818 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4819 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4820 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4821 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4822 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4823 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4824
4825 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4826 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
4827
4828 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4829 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4830 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4831 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4832 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4833 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4834 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
4835 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4836 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4837 kernel developers as
4838 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
4839 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4840 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4841 Lenovo forums, both for
4842 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
4843 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
4844 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
4845 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4846 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4847 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4848 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4849 There is even a
4850 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
4851 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4852 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
4853
4854 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4855 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4856 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4857 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4858 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4859 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4860 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4861 </description>
4862         </item>
4863
4864         <item>
4865                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
4866                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
4867                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
4868                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4869                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4870 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4871 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4872 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
4873 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4874 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4875 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4876 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4877 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
4878
4879 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4880 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4881 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4882 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
4883 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4884 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4885 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
4886
4887 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4888 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4889 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4890 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4891 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4892 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4893
4894 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
4895 </description>
4896         </item>
4897
4898         <item>
4899                 <title>Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
4900                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
4901                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
4902                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4903                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4904 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
4905
4906 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
4907 2013-07-03&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4908
4909 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4910 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4911
4912 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4913
4914 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
4915 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4916 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4917 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4918 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4919 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4920 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4921 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4922 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4923 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4924 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4925 desktop contains
4926 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
4927 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
4928 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4929 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
4930
4931 &lt;p&gt;This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4932 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4933 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
4934
4935 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4936 &lt;ul&gt;
4937   &lt;li&gt;Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.&lt;/li&gt;
4938   &lt;li&gt;Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
4939     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
4940     brings KDE in line with the others.&lt;/li&gt;
4941   &lt;li&gt;Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
4942     they don&#39;t have a desktop menu entry and thus won&#39;t show up in the
4943     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.&lt;/li&gt;
4944   &lt;li&gt;Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
4945     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
4946     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
4947     too.&lt;/li&gt;
4948   &lt;li&gt;Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
4949     are too few to make the package useful.&lt;/li&gt;
4950 &lt;/ul&gt;
4951 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4952 &lt;ul&gt;
4953   &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
4954   &lt;li&gt;Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.&lt;/li&gt;
4955   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
4956     up for some language options.&lt;/li&gt;
4957   &lt;li&gt;Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.&lt;/li&gt;
4958   &lt;li&gt;Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
4959   &lt;li&gt;Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
4960     d-i is doing it.&lt;/li&gt;
4961   &lt;li&gt;Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
4962     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
4963   &lt;li&gt;Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
4964     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
4965     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.&lt;/li&gt;
4966   &lt;li&gt;Update system to install needed firmware packages during
4967     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
4968   &lt;li&gt;Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).&lt;/li&gt;
4969   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
4970     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.&lt;/li&gt;
4971   &lt;li&gt;LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
4972     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.&lt;/li&gt;
4973 &lt;/ul&gt;
4974 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4975 &lt;ul&gt;
4976   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4977     available yet (698840).&lt;/li&gt;
4978   &lt;li&gt;Artwork not enabled for all desktops.&lt;/li&gt;
4979 &lt;/ul&gt;
4980 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4981
4982 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4983 &lt;ul&gt;
4984   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4985   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4986   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4987 &lt;/ul&gt;
4988
4989 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
4990 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8&lt;/p&gt;
4991
4992 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
4993 &lt;ul&gt;
4994   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4995   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4996   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
4997 &lt;/ul&gt;
4998
4999 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
5000 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721&lt;/p&gt;
5001
5002 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5003
5004 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5005 </description>
5006         </item>
5007
5008         <item>
5009                 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
5010                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
5011                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
5012                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5013                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5014 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5015 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5016 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
5017 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5018 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
5019 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
5020 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5021 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5022 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5023 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
5024
5025 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5026 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5027 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5028 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5029 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5030 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5031 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5032 firmware-ipw2x00
5033 firmware-ipw2x00
5034 Preconfiguring packages ...
5035 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5036 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5037 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5038 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
5039 #
5040 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5041
5042 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5043 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
5044
5045 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5046 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5047 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5048 #
5049 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5050
5051 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5052 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5053
5054 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
5055 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5056 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
5057 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5058 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5059 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
5060 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5061 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
5062 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
5063
5064 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5065 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5066 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
5067 #655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5068 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5069 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
5070 </description>
5071         </item>
5072
5073         <item>
5074                 <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
5075                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
5076                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
5077                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5078                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5079 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project, we include a post-installation test suite,
5080 which check that services are running, working, and return the
5081 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
5082 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
5083 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
5084 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
5085 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
5086 configured, which is the topic of this post.&lt;/p&gt;
5087
5088 &lt;p&gt;The last week I&#39;ve fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
5089 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
5090 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
5091 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
5092 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
5093 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
5094 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
5095 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
5096 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
5097 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
5098 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
5099 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
5100 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
5101 right after we got the ISOs operational.&lt;/p&gt;
5102
5103 &lt;p&gt;Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
5104 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
5105 test suite using &lt;tt&gt;/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install&lt;/tt&gt; and see if
5106 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
5107 the problem.&lt;/p&gt;
5108
5109 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
5110 please join us on
5111 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
5112 irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt; and the
5113 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt; mailing
5114 list.&lt;/p&gt;
5115 </description>
5116         </item>
5117
5118         <item>
5119                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</title>
5120                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</link>
5121                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</guid>
5122                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5123                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
5124 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; distribution have users and contributors all around the
5125 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
5126 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;our IRC channel
5127 #debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
5128 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
5129 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
5130 with him, to learn more about him.&lt;/p&gt;
5131
5132 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5133
5134 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
5135 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year&#39;s Eve
5136 party, I had a very nice &lt;strike&gt;beer&lt;/strike&gt; discussion with a
5137 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
5138 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
5139 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
5140 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
5141 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
5142 field.&lt;/p&gt;
5143
5144 &lt;p&gt;A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
5145 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
5146 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
5147 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceata.org/&quot;&gt;Fundația Ceata&lt;/a&gt;, which is a free
5148 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
5149 the only one we have in our country.&lt;/p&gt;
5150
5151 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5152 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5153
5154 &lt;p&gt;The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
5155 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
5156 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
5157 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
5158 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
5159 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
5160 ways to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;
5161
5162 &lt;p&gt;My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
5163 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
5164 haven&#39;t fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
5165 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
5166 software in my country is pretty low, I&#39;ll be happy to be the first
5167 one around here advocating for the project&#39;s adoption in educational
5168 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
5169 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
5170 from now on, time will tell what I&#39;ll be doing next, but I think I
5171 have a pretty consistent starting point.&lt;/p&gt;
5172
5173 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5174 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5175
5176 &lt;p&gt;Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
5177 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
5178 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
5179 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
5180 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
5181 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
5182 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
5183 it comes to managing a school&#39;s network, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
5184
5185 &lt;p&gt;Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
5186 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
5187 scenarios is something I can&#39;t wait to experiment &quot;into the wild&quot; (I
5188 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
5189 lot more I haven&#39;t discovered yet about it, being so new within the
5190 project.&lt;/p&gt;
5191
5192 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5193 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5194
5195 &lt;p&gt;As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
5196 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
5197 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
5198 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I&#39;d like to see
5199 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
5200 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
5201 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
5202 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project&#39;s dynamics. Not
5203 to mention it&#39;s a very fun blend to work on!&lt;/p&gt;
5204
5205 &lt;p&gt;Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
5206 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
5207 to all blends and derivatives, but it&#39;s an issue we can all work
5208 on.&lt;/p&gt;
5209
5210 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5211
5212 &lt;p&gt;I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
5213 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
5214 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
5215 Enlightenment project a lot!),
5216 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claws-mail.org/‎&quot;&gt;Claws Mail&lt;/a&gt; due to its ease of
5217 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
5218 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/redshift&quot;&gt;Redshift&lt;/a&gt;, which helps me
5219 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
5220 stuff in this bag, but I&#39;ll need a blog on my own for doing this!&lt;/p&gt;
5221
5222 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5223 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5224
5225 &lt;p&gt;Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
5226 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
5227 that:&lt;/p&gt;
5228
5229 &lt;ul&gt;
5230
5231 &lt;li&gt;schools would like to get rid of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
5232
5233 &lt;li&gt;students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
5234     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
5235     of teenagers more?&lt;/li&gt;
5236
5237 &lt;li&gt;there is no &quot;right one&quot; when it comes to strategies, but it would
5238     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
5239     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I&#39;d promote
5240     them!)&lt;/li&gt;
5241
5242 &lt;li&gt;more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
5243     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
5244     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)&lt;/li&gt;
5245
5246 &lt;/ul&gt;
5247
5248 &lt;p&gt;I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
5249 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
5250 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
5251 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
5252 very hard to convert against their will.&lt;/p&gt;
5253 </description>
5254         </item>
5255
5256         <item>
5257                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</title>
5258                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</link>
5259                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</guid>
5260                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5261                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There is a certain cross-over between the
5262 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5263 project&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edubuntu.org/&quot;&gt;the Edubuntu
5264 project&lt;/a&gt;, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
5265 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
5266 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.&lt;/p&gt;
5267
5268 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5269
5270 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
5271 days vary quite a bit since I&#39;m involved in too many things. As I&#39;m
5272 getting older I&#39;m learning how to focus a bit more :)&lt;/p&gt;
5273
5274 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
5275 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
5276 each other.&lt;/p&gt;
5277
5278 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5279 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5280
5281 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
5282 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
5283 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
5284 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
5285 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
5286 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
5287 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
5288 day I have a big todo list backlog that I&#39;m catching up with. I think
5289 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
5290 been gradually improving, although I think there&#39;s a lot that we could
5291 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I&#39;m sure
5292 we&#39;ll get there one day.&lt;/p&gt;
5293
5294 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5295 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5296
5297 &lt;p&gt;Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
5298 it for pages, but in essence I love that it&#39;s a very honest project
5299 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
5300 very high quality work.&lt;/p&gt;
5301
5302 &lt;p&gt;I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
5303 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
5304 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
5305 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it&#39;s easier for
5306 community members and commercial suppliers to support.&lt;/p&gt;
5307
5308 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5309 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5310
5311 &lt;p&gt;I had to re-type this one a few times because I&#39;m trying to
5312 separate &quot;disadvantages&quot; from &quot;areas that need improvement&quot; (which is
5313 what I originally rambled on about)&lt;/p&gt;
5314
5315 &lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
5316 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
5317 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
5318 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
5319 on. When you&#39;ve been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
5320 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
5321 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
5322 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I&#39;d love to be one
5323 myself but I&#39;m already so over-committed that it&#39;s just not possible
5324 currently.&lt;/p&gt;
5325
5326 &lt;p&gt;I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
5327 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
5328 their skills in-house. I&#39;m often saddened to see how much money
5329 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don&#39;t
5330 have access to after the service has ended and they could&#39;ve gotten so
5331 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
5332 autonomous.&lt;/p&gt;
5333
5334 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5335
5336 &lt;p&gt;My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
5337 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
5338 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
5339 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
5340 so I suppose I&#39;ll soon be able to regain that disk space :)&lt;/p&gt;
5341
5342 &lt;p&gt;Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
5343 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I&#39;ve been torn on
5344 which desktop environment I like and I&#39;m taking some refuge in Xfce
5345 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
5346 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
5347 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
5348 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
5349 X.&lt;/p&gt;
5350
5351 &lt;p&gt;I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
5352 using Norton Commander in the early 90&#39;s and it stuck (I think the
5353 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don&#39;t know how to use
5354 it :p)
5355
5356 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5357 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5358
5359 &lt;p&gt;I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
5360 many cases it&#39;s appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
5361 don&#39;t think that there&#39;s any particular moral or ethical problem with
5362 that.&lt;/p&gt;
5363
5364 &lt;p&gt;I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
5365 problems in educational institutions and it&#39;s just a shame not taking
5366 advantage of that.&lt;/p&gt;
5367
5368 &lt;p&gt;I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
5369 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
5370 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
5371 general concepts. I think that&#39;s very unproductive because firstly, MS
5372 Office&#39;s interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
5373 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
5374 best solution for them.&lt;/p&gt;
5375
5376 &lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
5377 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
5378 make a decision that would work for them.&lt;/p&gt;
5379 </description>
5380         </item>
5381
5382         <item>
5383                 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
5384                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
5385                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
5386                 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5387                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
5388 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
5389 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
5390 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I&#39;ve seen it
5391 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
5392 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
5393 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
5394 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
5395 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
5396 i915 driver used by the
5397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
5398 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
5399
5400 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
5401 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
5402 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
5403 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
5404 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
5405
5406 &lt;pre&gt;
5407 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
5408 update-initramfs -u -k all
5409 &lt;/pre&gt;
5410
5411 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
5412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
5413 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
5414 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
5415 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
5416 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
5417 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
5418 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
5419 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
5420 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
5421 number.&lt;/p&gt;
5422
5423 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
5424 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
5425
5426 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5427 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
5428     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
5429     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
5430  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
5431  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
5432     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
5433  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
5434     &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
5435  Latency: 0
5436  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
5437  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
5438  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
5439  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
5440  Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
5441  Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
5442  Kernel driver in use: i915
5443 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5444
5445 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5446
5447 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5448 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
5449        ...
5450         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
5451         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
5452        ...
5453 }
5454 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5455
5456 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
5457 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
5458 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
5459 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
5460 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
5461 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
5462 yet shown up in
5463 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
5464 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
5465 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
5466 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
5467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
5468 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
5469
5470 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
5471 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
5472 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
5473 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
5474 the screen during login.  I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
5475 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
5476 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
5477 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
5478 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
5479 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
5480 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
5481 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
5482
5483 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
5484 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
5485 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
5486 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
5487 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
5488 </description>
5489         </item>
5490
5491         <item>
5492                 <title>Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
5493                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
5494                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
5495                 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5496                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5497 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
5498
5499 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
5500 2013-06-10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5501
5502 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
5503 alpha2, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
5504
5505 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5506
5507 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
5508 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5509 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5510 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5511 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5512 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5513 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5514 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5515 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5516 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5517 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5518 desktop contains
5519 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
5520 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
5521 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5522 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
5523
5524 &lt;p&gt;This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5525 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5526 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
5527
5528 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5529
5530 &lt;ul&gt;
5531
5532 &lt;li&gt;Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
5533 &lt;li&gt;Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
5534 &lt;li&gt;Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
5535 &lt;li&gt;Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
5536 &lt;li&gt;Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
5537
5538 &lt;/ul&gt;
5539
5540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5541
5542 &lt;ul&gt;
5543
5544 &lt;li&gt;The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
5545 &lt;li&gt;Updated translation of the installation.
5546 &lt;li&gt;New Romanian translation.
5547 &lt;li&gt;Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
5548 &lt;li&gt;Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
5549 &lt;li&gt;Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
5550 &lt;li&gt;New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
5551 &lt;li&gt;Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
5552 &lt;li&gt;More testsuite tests.
5553 &lt;li&gt;Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
5554 &lt;li&gt;Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
5555
5556 &lt;li&gt;Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
5557 LTSP in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
5558
5559 &lt;li&gt;Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
5560 them up with GOsa².&lt;/li&gt;
5561
5562 &lt;li&gt;Update IMAP server setup. &lt;/li&gt;
5563
5564 &lt;li&gt;Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
5565 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
5566 entered password). &lt;/li&gt;
5567
5568 &lt;/ul&gt;
5569
5570 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5571
5572 &lt;ul&gt;
5573
5574 &lt;li&gt;DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
5575
5576 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5577 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
5578 missing import feature).&lt;/li&gt;
5579
5580 &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). &lt;/li&gt;
5581
5582 &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
5583 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
5584 unfixed.&lt;/li&gt;
5585
5586 &lt;/ul&gt;
5587
5588 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5589
5590 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
5591
5592 &lt;ul&gt;
5593
5594 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5595
5596 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5597
5598 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
5599
5600 &lt;/ul&gt;
5601
5602 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
5603 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419&lt;/p&gt;
5604
5605 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5606
5607 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
5608 </description>
5609         </item>
5610
5611         <item>
5612                 <title>Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</title>
5613                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</link>
5614                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</guid>
5615                 <pubDate>Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5616                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
5617 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
5618 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
5619 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
5620 the project:
5621
5622 &lt;ol&gt;
5623
5624 &lt;li&gt;It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
5625   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
5626   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;BTS report #700257&lt;/a&gt;.
5627   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
5628   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?&lt;/li&gt;
5629
5630 &lt;li&gt;It is not possible to &quot;mass import&quot; user lists in Gosa, neither
5631   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
5632   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
5633   This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;BTS report
5634   #698840&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
5635
5636 &lt;/ol&gt;
5637
5638 &lt;p&gt;If you can help us, please join us on IRC
5639 (&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
5640 irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;) and provide patches via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
5641 </description>
5642         </item>
5643
5644         <item>
5645                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</title>
5646                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</link>
5647                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</guid>
5648                 <pubDate>Tue, 4 Jun 2013 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5649                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last English
5650 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
5651 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
5652 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
5653 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
5654 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.&lt;/p&gt;
5655
5656 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5657
5658 &lt;p&gt;I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
5659 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
5660 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
5661 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.&lt;/p&gt;
5662
5663 &lt;p&gt;I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
5664 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
5665 packaging, publicity and translation.&lt;/p&gt;
5666
5667 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5668 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5669
5670 &lt;p&gt;I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
5671 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals&quot;&gt;the
5672 Debian Edu manual&lt;/a&gt; for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
5673 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
5674 manual.
5675
5676 &lt;p&gt;I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
5677 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
5678 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
5679 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.&lt;/p&gt;
5680
5681 &lt;p&gt;What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
5682 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
5683 by &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa²&lt;/a&gt;.  What pleased
5684 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
5685 there were many &quot;traditional&quot; educative software to learn languages,
5686 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
5687 artistic skills with music (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ardour.org/&quot;&gt;Ardour&lt;/a&gt;,
5688 &lt;a href=&quot;http://audacity.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Audacity&lt;/a&gt;) and
5689 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
5690 &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Stopmotion&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
5691
5692 &lt;p&gt;I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
5693 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt;.
5694 Unfortunately, I don&#39;t much time to get more involved in this
5695 beautiful project.&lt;/p&gt;
5696
5697 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5698 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5699
5700 &lt;p&gt;For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
5701 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
5702 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.&lt;/p&gt;
5703
5704 &lt;p&gt;I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
5705 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
5706 of educational free software.&lt;/p&gt;
5707
5708 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5709 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5710
5711 &lt;p&gt;Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
5712 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
5713 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
5714 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
5715 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.&lt;/p&gt;
5716
5717 &lt;p&gt;One can find support from a company by looking at
5718 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp&quot;&gt;the
5719 wiki dokumentation&lt;/a&gt;, where some countries already have a number of
5720 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
5721 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
5722 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
5723 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
5724 support for Debian Edu as well.&lt;/p&gt;
5725
5726 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5727
5728 &lt;p&gt;I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
5729 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
5730 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
5731 also using the mathematical software
5732 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎&quot;&gt;Scilab&lt;/a&gt; and
5733 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎&quot;&gt;Sage&lt;/a&gt; (built from
5734 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
5735
5736 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
5737 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
5738 statistics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5739
5740 &lt;p&gt;I do not have any &quot;nice&quot; recommendations for statistics. At our
5741 university, we use both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/‎&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt; and
5742 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
5743 geometry, there are nice programs:&lt;/p&gt;
5744
5745 &lt;ul&gt;
5746
5747 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drgeo.eu/&quot;&gt;drgeo&lt;/a&gt; and
5748 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎&quot;&gt;kig&lt;/a&gt; to do
5749 constructions in planar geometry
5750
5751 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html&quot;&gt;kali&lt;/a&gt;
5752 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
5753 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.&lt;/li&gt;
5754
5755 &lt;/ul&gt;
5756
5757 &lt;p&gt;I like also
5758 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor&quot;&gt;cantor&lt;/a&gt;, which
5759 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
5760 &lt;a href=&quot;http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎&quot;&gt;Octave&lt;/a&gt;, etc...&lt;/p&gt;
5761
5762 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5763 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5764
5765 &lt;p&gt;My suggestions would be to&lt;/p&gt;
5766
5767 &lt;ul&gt;
5768
5769 &lt;li&gt;advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.&lt;/li&gt;
5770
5771 &lt;li&gt;communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
5772     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
5773     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.&lt;/li&gt;
5774
5775 &lt;li&gt;advertise the living and strong community around the project.&lt;/li&gt;
5776
5777 &lt;li&gt;show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
5778     system.&lt;/li&gt;
5779
5780 &lt;/ul&gt;
5781 </description>
5782         </item>
5783
5784         <item>
5785                 <title>Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</title>
5786                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</link>
5787                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</guid>
5788                 <pubDate>Sat, 1 Jun 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5789                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5790 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, there are quite a lot of educational software.
5791 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
5792 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
5793 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
5794 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
5795 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
5796 program.&lt;/p&gt;
5797
5798 &lt;!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk &#39;{print $2}&#39;); do   echo; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;$f&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;;   (     for p in $(debtags search --names &quot;use::learning &amp;&amp; interface::x11 &amp;&amp; role::program &amp;&amp; $f&quot;); do img=&quot;&lt;img src=&#39;http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p&#39; alt=&#39;$p&#39;&gt;&quot;; if dpkg -s $p &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1; then           echo &quot;&lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p&#39;&gt;$img&lt;/a&gt;&quot;; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; done --&gt;
5799
5800 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::arts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5801 &lt;p&gt;
5802 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png&#39; alt=&#39;audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5803 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5804 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png&#39; alt=&#39;denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5805 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png&#39; alt=&#39;freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5806 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5807 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png&#39; alt=&#39;gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5808 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png&#39; alt=&#39;hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5809 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png&#39; alt=&#39;lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5810 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png&#39; alt=&#39;lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5811 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png&#39; alt=&#39;rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5812 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png&#39; alt=&#39;scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5813 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png&#39; alt=&#39;solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5814 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png&#39; alt=&#39;stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5815 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5816 &lt;/p&gt;
5817
5818 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::astronomy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5819 &lt;p&gt;
5820 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png&#39; alt=&#39;celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5821 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png&#39; alt=&#39;gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5822 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png&#39; alt=&#39;kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5823 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=planets&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png&#39; alt=&#39;planets&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5824 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png&#39; alt=&#39;stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5825 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5826 &lt;/p&gt;
5827
5828 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::biology:structural&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5829 &lt;p&gt;
5830 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5831 &lt;/p&gt;
5832
5833 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::chemistry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5834 &lt;p&gt;
5835 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png&#39; alt=&#39;atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5836 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png&#39; alt=&#39;chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5837 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png&#39; alt=&#39;easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5838 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5839 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png&#39; alt=&#39;gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5840 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png&#39; alt=&#39;ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5841 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png&#39; alt=&#39;gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5842 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5843 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5844 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=viewmol&#39;&gt;[viewmol]&lt;/a&gt;
5845 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png&#39; alt=&#39;xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5846 &lt;/p&gt;
5847
5848 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::electronics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5849 &lt;p&gt;
5850 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5851 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpsim&#39;&gt;[gpsim]&lt;/a&gt;
5852 &lt;/p&gt;
5853
5854 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::geography&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5855 &lt;p&gt;
5856 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png&#39; alt=&#39;kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5857 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=marble&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png&#39; alt=&#39;marble&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5858 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5859 &lt;/p&gt;
5860
5861 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::linguistics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5862 &lt;p&gt;
5863 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5864 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png&#39; alt=&#39;kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5865 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png&#39; alt=&#39;khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5866 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png&#39; alt=&#39;klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5867 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=parley&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png&#39; alt=&#39;parley&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5868 &lt;/p&gt;
5869
5870 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5871 &lt;p&gt;
5872 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5873 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png&#39; alt=&#39;drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5874 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5875 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5876 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geomview&#39;&gt;[geomview]&lt;/a&gt;
5877 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=grace&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png&#39; alt=&#39;grace&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5878 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5879 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5880 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5881 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png&#39; alt=&#39;kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5882 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kig&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png&#39; alt=&#39;kig&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5883 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png&#39; alt=&#39;kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5884 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png&#39; alt=&#39;mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5885 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png&#39; alt=&#39;rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5886 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5887 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5888 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png&#39; alt=&#39;xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5889 &lt;/p&gt;
5890
5891 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::physics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5892 &lt;p&gt;
5893 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5894 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=step&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png&#39; alt=&#39;step&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5895 &lt;/p&gt;
5896
5897 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::TODO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5898 &lt;p&gt;
5899 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png&#39; alt=&#39;blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5900 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png&#39; alt=&#39;cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5901 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5902 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5903 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5904 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5905 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png&#39; alt=&#39;gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5906 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png&#39; alt=&#39;ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5907 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png&#39; alt=&#39;librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5908 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
5909 &lt;/p&gt;
5910
5911 &lt;p&gt;In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
5912 &lt;a href=&quot;http://screenshot.debian.net&quot;&gt;screenshot.debian.net&lt;/a&gt;.  If
5913 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
5914 know on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu
5915 on irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;, or our
5916 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;mailing list
5917 debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5918 </description>
5919         </item>
5920
5921         <item>
5922                 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
5923                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
5924                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
5925                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5926                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
5927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
5928 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
5929 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;.  I found a solution, but am horrified
5930 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
5931 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
5932
5933 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
5934 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
5935 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
5936 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
5937 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
5938
5939 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
5940 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
5941 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
5942 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
5943 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
5944 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
5945 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
5946 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
5947 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
5948
5949 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
5950 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
5951 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
5952 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
5953 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
5954 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
5955 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
5956 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
5957
5958 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
5959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
5960 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
5961 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
5962 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
5963
5964 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
5965 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
5966 </description>
5967         </item>
5968
5969         <item>
5970                 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
5971                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
5972                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
5973                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5974                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5975 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5976 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5977 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5978 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5979 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
5980
5981 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5982 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5983 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5984 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5985 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5986 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5987 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5988 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5989 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5990 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
5991
5992 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5993 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
5994 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5995 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5996 page.  If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5997 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
5998
5999 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6000 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
6001 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
6002 </description>
6003         </item>
6004
6005         <item>
6006                 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
6007                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
6008                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
6009                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6010                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
6011 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
6012 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6013 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
6014 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6015 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
6016 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6017 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
6019 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
6020
6021 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6022 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6023 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn&#39;t very
6024 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6025 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
6026
6027 &lt;p&gt;The script,
6028 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
6029 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6030 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6031 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
6032
6033 &lt;ol&gt;
6034
6035 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
6036 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
6037 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6038     our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
6039 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6040     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6041     according to the profile specified in the config above,
6042     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
6043 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6044     that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
6045 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
6046
6047 &lt;/ol&gt;
6048
6049 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6050 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6051 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6052 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
6053
6054 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6055 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
6056 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6057 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
6058 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6059 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
6060
6061 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6062 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6063 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
6064
6065 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6066 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
6067 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
6068 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6069
6070 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6071 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6072 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6073 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
6074 </description>
6075         </item>
6076
6077         <item>
6078                 <title>Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
6079                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
6080                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
6081                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6082                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6083 project&lt;/a&gt; is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
6084 release today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
6085
6086 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
6087 2013-05-14&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6088
6089 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6090 alpha1, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; with
6091 codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
6092
6093 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6094
6095 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6096 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6097 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
6098 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6099 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6100 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6101 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
6102 other machines can be installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
6103
6104 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6105 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6106 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
6107
6108 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6109 &lt;ul&gt;
6110   &lt;li&gt;Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
6111     default.&lt;/li&gt;
6112   &lt;li&gt;Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.&lt;/li&gt;
6113   &lt;li&gt;Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.&lt;/li&gt;
6114   &lt;li&gt;Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
6115     ibus-anthy.&lt;/li&gt;
6116 &lt;/ul&gt;
6117
6118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6119 &lt;ul&gt;
6120
6121   &lt;li&gt;Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
6122     reliability improvements.&lt;/li&gt;
6123   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
6124     of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706434&quot;&gt;706434&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
6125   &lt;li&gt;Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
6126     problems.&lt;/li&gt;
6127   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
6128     direct:// URL.&lt;/li&gt;
6129   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.&lt;/li&gt;
6130   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.&lt;/li&gt;
6131   &lt;li&gt;Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.&lt;/li&gt;
6132   &lt;li&gt;Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
6133     servers, to make room for all the software installed.&lt;/li&gt;
6134   &lt;li&gt;Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
6135     log in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706753&quot;&gt;706753&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
6136 &lt;/ul&gt;
6137
6138 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6139 &lt;ul&gt;
6140
6141   &lt;li&gt;IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
6142     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/705900&quot;&gt;705900&lt;/a&gt;).  Only install
6143     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.&lt;/li&gt;
6144   &lt;li&gt;DVD images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
6145   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6146     available yet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;698840&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
6147   &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).&lt;/li&gt;
6148   &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.&lt;/li&gt;
6149   &lt;li&gt;LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
6150     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.&lt;/li&gt;
6151   &lt;li&gt;Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
6152     password submission problem
6153     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;700257&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
6154
6155 &lt;/ul&gt;
6156
6157 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6158
6159 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
6160 &lt;ul&gt;
6161
6162   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6163   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6164   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
6165
6166 &lt;/ul&gt;
6167
6168 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b&lt;/p&gt;
6169
6170 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c&lt;/p&gt;
6171
6172 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6173
6174 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6175 </description>
6176         </item>
6177
6178         <item>
6179                 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
6180                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
6181                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
6182                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6183                 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
6184 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
6185 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
6186 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6187 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
6188 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
6189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
6190 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
6191 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
6192 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6193 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
6194 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
6195 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
6196
6197 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
6198 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6199 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6200 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6201 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6202 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6203 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6204 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6205 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6206 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6207 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
6208 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6209
6210 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6211 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
6212 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
6213
6214 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6215 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6216 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
6217 </description>
6218         </item>
6219
6220         <item>
6221                 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
6222                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
6223                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
6224                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
6225                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6226 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
6227 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
6228 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6229 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6230
6231 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6232 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
6233 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
6234 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
6235 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
6236 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
6237 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
6238 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6239 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6240 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6241 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
6242
6243 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6244 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
6245 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
6246 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
6247 follow.&lt;p&gt;
6248 </description>
6249         </item>
6250
6251         <item>
6252                 <title>First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
6253                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
6254                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
6255                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6256                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
6257 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
6258 announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
6259
6260 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
6261 2013-04-26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6262
6263 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
6264 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
6265
6266 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6267
6268 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
6269 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6270 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6271 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
6272 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6273 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6274 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6275 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6276 installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
6277
6278 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6279 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6280 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
6281
6282 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6283
6284 &lt;ul&gt;
6285 &lt;li&gt;Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
6286   &lt;ul&gt;
6287      &lt;li&gt;Linux kernel 3.2.x&lt;/li&gt;
6288      &lt;li&gt;Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
6289          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
6290          manual.)&lt;/li&gt;
6291      &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR&lt;/li&gt;
6292      &lt;li&gt;LibreOffice 3.5.4&lt;/li&gt;
6293      &lt;li&gt;LTSP 5.4.2&lt;/li&gt;
6294      &lt;li&gt;GOsa 2.7.4&lt;/li&gt;
6295      &lt;li&gt;CUPS print system 1.5.3&lt;/li&gt;
6296      &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01&lt;/li&gt;
6297      &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 12.04&lt;/li&gt;
6298      &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.8.2&lt;/li&gt;
6299      &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1&lt;/li&gt;
6300      &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3&lt;/li&gt;
6301      &lt;li&gt;Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6&lt;/li&gt;
6302      &lt;li&gt;New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
6303          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation
6304          manual&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/li&gt;
6305      &lt;li&gt;Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
6306          installation.&lt;/li&gt;
6307      &lt;li&gt;More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
6308          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes&quot;&gt;release notes&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
6309   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6310 &lt;/ul&gt;
6311
6312 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6313 &lt;ul&gt;
6314 &lt;li&gt;The (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt;) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
6315     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
6316     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.&lt;/li&gt;
6317 &lt;/ul&gt;
6318
6319 &lt;p&gt;&lt;Strong&gt;LDAP related changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6320 &lt;ul&gt;
6321 &lt;li&gt;Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
6322     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
6323     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.&lt;/li&gt;
6324 &lt;/ul&gt;
6325
6326 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6327 &lt;ul&gt;
6328 &lt;li&gt;LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
6329     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
6330     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.&lt;li&gt;
6331 &lt;li&gt;GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
6332     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
6333     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.&lt;/li&gt;
6334 &lt;/ul&gt;
6335
6336 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regressions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6337 &lt;ul&gt;
6338 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
6339     yet.&lt;/li&gt;
6340 &lt;/ul&gt;
6341
6342 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No updated artwork&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6343
6344 &lt;ul&gt;
6345 &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
6346     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
6347     had for our Squeeze based release.&lt;/li&gt;
6348 &lt;/ul&gt;
6349
6350 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6351
6352 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
6353 &lt;ul&gt;
6354 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6355 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6356 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/li&gt;
6357 &lt;/ul&gt;
6358
6359 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c&lt;/p&gt;
6360
6361 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2&lt;/p&gt;
6362
6363 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6364
6365 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6366 </description>
6367         </item>
6368
6369         <item>
6370                 <title>First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</title>
6371                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</link>
6372                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</guid>
6373                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6374                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This years first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux /
6375 Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
6376 Details about the gathering can be found
6377 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim&quot;&gt;on
6378 the FRiSK wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
6379 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
6380 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
6381 weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
6382
6383 &lt;p&gt;The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
6384 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
6385 Edu release.&lt;/p&gt;
6386
6387 &lt;p&gt;See you on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,&lt;/a&gt; then?&lt;/p&gt;
6388 </description>
6389         </item>
6390
6391         <item>
6392                 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
6393                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
6394                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
6395                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
6396                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
6397 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6398 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6399 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
6400
6401 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6402 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
6403 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6404 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6405 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6406 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6407 </description>
6408         </item>
6409
6410         <item>
6411                 <title>Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</title>
6412                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</link>
6413                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</guid>
6414                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
6415                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
6416 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
6417 font you use when printing.&lt;/p&gt;
6418
6419 &lt;p&gt;Three years ago,
6420 &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/&quot;&gt;Ars
6421 Technica&lt;/a&gt; reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
6422 changed their default front from
6423 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial&quot;&gt;Arial&lt;/a&gt; to
6424 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic&quot;&gt;Century
6425 Gothic&lt;/a&gt; to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
6426 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
6427 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
6428 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
6429 prints.&lt;/p&gt;
6430
6431 &lt;p&gt;But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
6432 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
6433 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
6434 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097&quot;&gt;a report from
6435 TwinCities.com&lt;/a&gt;, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
6436 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
6437 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
6438 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
6439 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
6440 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
6441 depend on the documents printed.&lt;/p&gt;
6442
6443 &lt;p&gt;But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
6444 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
6445 and save some money in the process.&lt;/p&gt;
6446
6447 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
6448 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
6449 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font&quot;&gt;service to calculate the
6450 difference between font pairs&lt;/a&gt;.  They also
6451 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---&quot;&gt;recommend
6452 which fonts to use&lt;/a&gt; to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
6453 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
6454 &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/&quot;&gt;listing
6455 the fonts they recommend&lt;/a&gt;, with Centory Gothic at the top.&lt;/p&gt;
6456 </description>
6457         </item>
6458
6459         <item>
6460                 <title>Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</title>
6461                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</link>
6462                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</guid>
6463                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6464                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, during a discussion in
6465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efn.no/&quot;&gt;EFN&lt;/a&gt; about interesting books to read
6466 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
6467 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
6468 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/&quot;&gt;Tore Åge Bringsværd&lt;/a&gt;
6469 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
6470 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
6471 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
6472 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
6473 short story using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;Creative
6474 Commons&lt;/a&gt; license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
6475 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;
6476
6477 &lt;p&gt;As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
6478 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
6479 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
6480 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; processing framework to
6481 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
6482 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
6483 distribution of choice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;, so
6484 all I had to do was to use the
6485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;dblatex&lt;/a&gt;,
6486 &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README&quot;&gt;dbtoepub&lt;/a&gt;
6487 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/&quot;&gt;xmlto&lt;/a&gt; tools to do the
6488 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
6489 xsltproc/fop (aka
6490 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets&quot;&gt;docbook-xsl&lt;/a&gt;),
6491 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
6492 nicer &amp;lt;variablelist&amp;gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
6493 technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;
6494
6495 &lt;p&gt;There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
6496 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
6497 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
6498 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
6499 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
6500 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;
6501
6502 &lt;p&gt;I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
6503 single star in it, ie &amp;lt;para&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/para&amp;gt;, but it made sure a
6504 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
6505 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
6506 preprocessor directive &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;, mapping to &quot;&amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;&quot;
6507 for HTML and &quot;&amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;fo:leader
6508 leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;&quot;
6509 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
6510 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6511
6512 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6513 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
6514 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
6515   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
6516     &amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;
6517   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
6518 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
6519 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6520
6521 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6522
6523 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6524 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
6525 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
6526   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
6527     &amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;
6528       &amp;lt;fo:leader leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;
6529     &amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;
6530   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
6531 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
6532 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6533
6534 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I came across the &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt; tag, which seem to be
6535 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;
6536 with &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/bridgehead&amp;gt;.  It isn&#39;t centred, but we
6537 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn&#39;t
6538 enough.&lt;/p&gt;
6539
6540 &lt;p&gt;I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
6541 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
6542 directive &amp;lt;?linebreak?&amp;gt;, mapping to &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt; in HTML, and
6543 &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
6544 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
6545 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6546
6547 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6548 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
6549 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
6550   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
6551     &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;
6552   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
6553 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
6554 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6555
6556 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6557
6558 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6559 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
6560 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;
6561   xmlns:fo=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format&quot;&amp;gt;
6562   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
6563     &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt;
6564   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
6565 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
6566 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6567
6568 &lt;p&gt;One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
6569 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
6570 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
6571 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
6572 page.&lt;/p&gt;
6573
6574 &lt;p&gt;If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
6575 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sickel/kodemus&quot;&gt;source repository at
6576 github&lt;/a&gt;
6577 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/EFN/kodemus&quot;&gt;future/new/official
6578 repository&lt;/a&gt;).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
6579 days.&lt;/p&gt;
6580 </description>
6581         </item>
6582
6583         <item>
6584                 <title>Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</title>
6585                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</link>
6586                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</guid>
6587                 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6588                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via
6589 &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
6590 I just discovered that &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcwizz.net/&quot;&gt;Pcwizz&lt;/a&gt; have
6591 done a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot;&gt;video
6592 review&lt;/a&gt; on Youtube of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
6593 / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
6594 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
6595 a few programs and his view of our distribution.&lt;/p&gt;
6596
6597 &lt;p&gt;There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
6598 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:&lt;/p&gt;
6599
6600 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6601 &quot;Basically everything you ever need in a school environment.&quot;
6602 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6603
6604 &lt;p&gt;And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:&lt;/p&gt;
6605
6606 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6607 &quot;So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
6608 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
6609 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
6610 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
6611 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network.&quot;
6612 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6613
6614 &lt;p&gt;To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
6615 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
6616 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
6617 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6618
6619 &lt;p&gt;While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
6620 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
6621
6622 &lt;blockquote&gt;
6623 &quot;[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
6624 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
6625 actually don&#39;t need in the education distribution, but have just been
6626 included because it isn&#39;t stripped out for some reason.&quot;
6627 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
6628
6629 &lt;p&gt;I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
6630 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
6631 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries&quot;&gt;one
6632 consistent menu system&lt;/a&gt; instead of two incomplete and partly
6633 inconsistent menu systems.&lt;/p&gt;
6634
6635 &lt;p&gt;The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
6636 embedding:&lt;/p&gt;
6637
6638 &lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
6639 </description>
6640         </item>
6641
6642         <item>
6643                 <title>First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</title>
6644                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</link>
6645                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</guid>
6646                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 Mar 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6647                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
6648 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
6649 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
6650 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
6651 initial release 2012-03-11&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the
6652 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;release
6653 announcement email from Holger&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
6654
6655 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
6656
6657 &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
6658 Edu 6.0.7+r1 (&quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;
6659
6660 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
6661 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
6662 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
6663 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
6664 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&lt;/a&gt;
6665 for more information on &quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
6666
6667 &lt;p&gt;Images are available for download at
6668 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6669
6670 &lt;p&gt;md5sums:
6671 &lt;br&gt;1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6672 &lt;br&gt;a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6673 &lt;br&gt;ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
6674
6675 &lt;p&gt;sha1sums:
6676 &lt;br&gt;a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6677 &lt;br&gt;9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6678 &lt;br&gt;43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
6679
6680 &lt;p&gt;These images are suitable for amd64+i386.&lt;/p&gt;
6681
6682 &lt;p&gt;Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename &quot;Squeeze&quot;, released
6683 2013-03-03:&lt;/p&gt;
6684
6685 &lt;ul&gt;
6686   &lt;li&gt;sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
6687   &lt;ul&gt;
6688         &lt;li&gt;Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient&lt;/li&gt;
6689         &lt;li&gt;Comply with 3.X kernel&lt;/li&gt;
6690   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6691   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
6692   &lt;ul&gt;
6693         &lt;li&gt;Minor updates from the wiki&lt;/li&gt;
6694         &lt;li&gt;Danish translation now complete&lt;/li&gt;
6695   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6696   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
6697      &lt;ul&gt;
6698         &lt;li&gt;Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880&lt;/li&gt;
6699         &lt;li&gt;Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.&lt;/li&gt;
6700         &lt;li&gt;Correct Kerberos user policy: don&#39;t expire password after 2 days.
6701                 Closes: #664596&lt;/li&gt;
6702         &lt;li&gt;Handle &#39;#&#39; characters in the root or first users password.
6703                 Closes: #664976&lt;/li&gt;
6704         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-sync:
6705            &lt;ul&gt;
6706                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t fail if password contains &quot;&lt;/li&gt;
6707                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t disclose new password string in syslog&lt;/li&gt;
6708            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6709         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-create:
6710            &lt;ul&gt;
6711                 &lt;li&gt;Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes&lt;/li&gt;
6712                 &lt;li&gt;Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²&lt;/li&gt;
6713                 &lt;li&gt;gosa-netgroups plugin: don&#39;t erase entries of attribute type
6714                          &quot;memberNisNetgroup&quot;. Closes: #687256&lt;/li&gt;
6715                 &lt;li&gt;First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users&lt;/li&gt;
6716            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6717         &lt;li&gt;Add Danish web page&lt;/li&gt;
6718     &lt;/ul&gt;
6719   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
6720     &lt;ul&gt;
6721         &lt;li&gt;Improve preseeding support and documentation&lt;/li&gt;
6722     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
6723 &lt;/ul&gt;
6724
6725 &lt;p&gt;End-user documentation in English is available at
6726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&lt;/a&gt;
6727 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
6728 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)&lt;/p&gt;
6729
6730 &lt;p&gt;If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
6731 mailinglist
6732 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;!
6733 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6734
6735 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6736 </description>
6737         </item>
6738
6739         <item>
6740                 <title>Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</title>
6741                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</link>
6742                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</guid>
6743                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Mar 2013 07:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
6744                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
6745 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
6746 support using
6747 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
6748 open standards&lt;/a&gt;?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
6749 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
6750 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
6751 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikanalen.no/&quot;&gt;Frikanalen&lt;/a&gt; have been building a
6752 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
6753 using the GNU LGPL, and
6754 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/Frikanalen&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6755
6756 &lt;p&gt;The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
6757 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
6758 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
6759 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
6760 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
6761 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.&lt;/p&gt;
6762
6763 &lt;p&gt;There are several parts to this web based solution.  I&#39;ll mention
6764 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
6765 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
6766 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
6767 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
6768 &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.frikanalen.tv/&quot;&gt;beta.frikanalen.tv&lt;/a&gt;.  The
6769 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
6770 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
6771 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casparcg.com/&quot;&gt;CasparCG from SVT&lt;/a&gt; and
6772 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mltframework.org/&quot;&gt;Media Lovin&#39; Toolkit&lt;/a&gt;.  Video
6773 signal distribution is handled using
6774 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ob-encoder.com/&quot;&gt;Open Broadcast Encoder&lt;/a&gt;.  The
6775 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
6776 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
6777 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
6778 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
6779 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
6780 them up a bit more first.&lt;/p&gt;
6781
6782 &lt;p&gt;The development is coordinated on the
6783 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen&quot;&gt;#frikanalen IRC
6784 channel&lt;/a&gt; (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
6785 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen&quot;&gt;the
6786 frikanalen mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
6787 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
6788 development.&lt;/p&gt;
6789 </description>
6790         </item>
6791
6792         <item>
6793                 <title>Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</title>
6794                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</link>
6795                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</guid>
6796                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6797                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stallman.org/&quot;&gt;Richard Stallman&lt;/a&gt;,
6798 founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/&quot;&gt;Free Software Foundation&lt;/a&gt;,
6799 is giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;a
6800 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00&lt;/a&gt;.  The event is public
6801 and organised by &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)&lt;/a&gt;
6802 (where I am the chair of the board) and
6803 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprog.no/&quot;&gt;The Norwegian Open Source Competence
6804 Center&lt;/a&gt;.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
6805 GNU», with this description:
6806
6807 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
6808 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users&#39; freedom to
6809 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
6810 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
6811 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
6812 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6813
6814 &lt;p&gt;The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
6815 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
6816 am really curious how many will show up.  See
6817 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;the event
6818 page&lt;/a&gt; for the location details.&lt;/p&gt;
6819 </description>
6820         </item>
6821
6822         <item>
6823                 <title>Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</title>
6824                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</link>
6825                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</guid>
6826                 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6827                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
6828 now a great source of free maps available from
6829 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html&quot;&gt;Frikart&lt;/a&gt;.  To
6830 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
6831 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
6832 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
6833 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
6834 &quot;Trails - overlay map&quot; and &quot;Cross country - overlay map&quot; (see the web
6835 page for descriptions).&lt;/p&gt;
6836
6837 &lt;p&gt;The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
6838 map you can just edit the
6839 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; map source
6840 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6841 </description>
6842         </item>
6843
6844         <item>
6845                 <title>&quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</title>
6846                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</link>
6847                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</guid>
6848                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6849                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
6850 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura&quot;&gt;solution promoted
6851 by the Norwegian government&lt;/a&gt; require that invoices are sent through
6852 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
6853 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
6854 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
6855 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
6856 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
6857 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
6858 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
6859 &quot;electronic&quot; information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
6860 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
6861 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
6862 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
6863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard&quot;&gt;the vCard format&lt;/a&gt;, as
6864 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.&lt;/p&gt;
6865
6866 &lt;p&gt;The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
6867 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
6868 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
6869 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;ask
6870 for donations to the Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; and thus have bank account
6871 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
6872 fields:&lt;/p&gt;
6873
6874 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6875 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6876 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6877 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
6878 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6879 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6880 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6881 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6882 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6883
6884 &lt;p&gt;The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
6885 answer regarding
6886 &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file&quot;&gt;how
6887 to put bank account information into a vCard&lt;/a&gt;.  For payments in
6888 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
6889 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.&lt;/p&gt;
6890
6891 &lt;p&gt;The complete vCard could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6892
6893 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6894 BEGIN:VCARD
6895 VERSION:2.1
6896 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
6897 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
6898 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
6899 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
6900 REV:20130212T095000Z
6901 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
6902 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
6903 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
6904 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
6905 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
6906 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
6907 END:VCARD
6908 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6909
6910 &lt;p&gt;The resulting QR code created using
6911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/&quot;&gt;qrencode&lt;/a&gt; would look
6912 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
6913 phone, or for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;zbar
6914 bar code reader&lt;/a&gt; and feed right into the approval and accounting
6915 system.&lt;/p&gt;
6916
6917 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6918
6919 &lt;p&gt;The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
6920 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
6921 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
6922 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
6923
6924 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-02-12 11:30&lt;/strong&gt;: Added KID to the proposal
6925 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.&lt;/p&gt;
6926 </description>
6927         </item>
6928
6929         <item>
6930                 <title>Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</title>
6931                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</link>
6932                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</guid>
6933                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6934                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;left&quot; style=&quot;margin-right:25px;&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6935
6936 &lt;p&gt;With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
6937 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
6938 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
6939 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
6940 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
6941 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
6942 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
6943 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
6944 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
6945 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
6946 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.&lt;/p&gt;
6947
6948 &lt;p&gt;But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
6949 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
6950 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick&quot;&gt;Tellstick&lt;/a&gt; and RF
6951 switches at the local &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clasohlson.com/&quot;&gt;Clas
6952 Ohlson&lt;/a&gt; shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
6953 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
6954 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
6955 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
6956 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
6957 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net&quot;&gt;Tellstick
6958 Net&lt;/a&gt; to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
6959 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
6960 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
6961 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
6962 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
6963 ones own
6964 &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware&quot;&gt;firmware
6965 with local access&lt;/A&gt; instead of being controlled by a Swedish
6966 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
6967 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
6968 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
6969 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
6970 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
6971 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
6972 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
6973 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
6974 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
6975
6976 &lt;p&gt;We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
6977 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
6978 &quot;morning light&quot; was turned on and signalled that the morning had
6979 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
6980 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
6981 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
6982
6983 &lt;p&gt;A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
6984 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
6985 can also delay it if we want to.&lt;/p&gt;
6986 </description>
6987         </item>
6988
6989         <item>
6990                 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
6991                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
6992                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
6993                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6994                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
6995 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
6996 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
6997 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
6998 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6999 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7000 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7001 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
7002
7003 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7004 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7005 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7006 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7007 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
7008 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7009 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7010 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
7011
7012 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7013 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7014 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
7015 #696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7016 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7017
7018 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7019 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7020 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7021 </description>
7022         </item>
7023
7024         <item>
7025                 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
7026                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
7027                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
7028                 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7029                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
7030 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
7031 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7032 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7033 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
7034 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
7035 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7036 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7037 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7038 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
7039 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
7041 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
7042 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
7043
7044 &lt;pre&gt;
7045 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7046 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
7047 &lt;/pre&gt;
7048
7049 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
7050 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7051 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7052 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7053
7054 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7055 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
7056 stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7057 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7058 word.&lt;/p&gt;
7059
7060 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
7061 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
7062 process.&lt;/p&gt;
7063
7064 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
7065 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
7066 </description>
7067         </item>
7068
7069         <item>
7070                 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
7071                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
7072                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
7073                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7074                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
7075 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
7076 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
7077 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
7078 it, fetch the
7079 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
7080 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
7081 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
7082 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
7083
7084 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
7085
7086 &lt;ul&gt;
7087
7088 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
7089 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
7090
7091 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
7092 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
7093 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
7094
7095 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
7096 the APT database, a database
7097 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
7098 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
7099
7100 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
7101 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
7102 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
7103 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
7104
7105 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
7106 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
7107
7108 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
7109 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
7110
7111 &lt;/ul&gt;
7112
7113 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
7114 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
7115 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
7116 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
7117
7118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
7119 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
7120 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
7121 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
7122 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7123
7124 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
7125 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
7126 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
7127 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
7128 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
7129 method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
7130 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
7131 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
7132
7133 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
7134 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
7135 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
7136 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
7137 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
7138 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
7139
7140 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
7141 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7142 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
7143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
7144 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
7145 </description>
7146         </item>
7147
7148         <item>
7149                 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
7150                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
7151                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
7152                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7153                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
7154 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7155 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
7156 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
7157 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
7158 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
7159 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7160 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7161 not a durable solution.
7162
7163 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
7164 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
7165
7166 &lt;ul&gt;
7167
7168 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7169   than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
7170 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
7171 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
7172 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
7173 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
7174 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
7175 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
7176 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
7177 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
7178 size).&lt;/li&gt;
7179 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7180   X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
7181 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7182   the time).
7183
7184 &lt;/ul&gt;
7185
7186 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7187 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7188 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7189 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
7190 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7191 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7192 Lenovo took over.  But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7193 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
7194
7195 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7196 external keyboard?  I&#39;ll have to check the
7197 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
7198 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7199 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
7200 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7201 </description>
7202         </item>
7203
7204         <item>
7205                 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
7206                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
7207                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
7208                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7209                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7210 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
7211 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
7212 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7213 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7214 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7215 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
7216
7217 &lt;pre&gt;
7218 #!/usr/bin/python
7219 import sys
7220 import apt
7221 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7222     cache = apt.Cache()
7223     cache.open(None)
7224     thepkgs = []
7225     for pkg in cache:
7226         version = pkg.candidate
7227         if version is None:
7228             version = pkg.installed
7229         if version is None:
7230             continue
7231         record = version.record
7232         if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
7233             continue
7234         mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
7235         for t in mime_types:
7236             t = t.rstrip().strip()
7237             if t == mimetype:
7238                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7239     return thepkgs
7240 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
7241 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
7242     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
7243 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
7244 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7245     print &quot;  %s&quot; %pkg
7246 &lt;/pre&gt;
7247
7248 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
7249
7250 &lt;pre&gt;
7251 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7252 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7253   gecko-mediaplayer
7254 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7255 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7256   browser-plugin-gnash
7257 %
7258 &lt;/pre&gt;
7259
7260 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7261 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7262 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
7263 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
7264
7265 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
7266 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7267 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
7268 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today).  Lack
7269 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7270 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
7271 </description>
7272         </item>
7273
7274         <item>
7275                 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
7276                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
7277                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
7278                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7279                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
7280 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
7281 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
7282 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
7283 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
7284 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
7285 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
7286 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
7287
7288 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
7289 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
7290 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
7291 can be found on the
7292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
7293 site&lt;/a&gt;.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
7294 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
7295 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
7296 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
7297
7298 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7299
7300 &lt;pre&gt;
7301   count MIME type
7302   ----- -----------------------
7303      32 text/plain
7304      30 audio/mpeg
7305      29 image/png
7306      28 image/jpeg
7307      27 application/ogg
7308      26 audio/x-mp3
7309      25 image/tiff
7310      25 image/gif
7311      22 image/bmp
7312      22 audio/x-wav
7313      20 audio/x-flac
7314      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7315      18 video/x-ms-asf
7316      18 audio/x-musepack
7317      18 audio/x-mpeg
7318      18 application/x-ogg
7319      17 video/mpeg
7320      17 audio/x-scpls
7321      17 audio/ogg
7322      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7323 &lt;/pre&gt;
7324
7325 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7326
7327 &lt;pre&gt;
7328   count MIME type
7329   ----- -----------------------
7330      33 text/plain
7331      32 image/png
7332      32 image/jpeg
7333      29 audio/mpeg
7334      27 image/gif
7335      26 image/tiff
7336      26 application/ogg
7337      25 audio/x-mp3
7338      22 image/bmp
7339      21 audio/x-wav
7340      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7341      19 audio/x-mpeg
7342      18 video/mpeg
7343      18 audio/x-scpls
7344      18 audio/x-flac
7345      18 application/x-ogg
7346      17 video/x-ms-asf
7347      17 text/html
7348      17 audio/x-musepack
7349      16 image/x-xbitmap
7350 &lt;/pre&gt;
7351
7352 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7353
7354 &lt;pre&gt;
7355   count MIME type
7356   ----- -----------------------
7357      31 text/plain
7358      31 image/png
7359      31 image/jpeg
7360      29 audio/mpeg
7361      28 application/ogg
7362      27 image/gif
7363      26 image/tiff
7364      26 audio/x-mp3
7365      23 audio/x-wav
7366      22 image/bmp
7367      21 audio/x-flac
7368      20 audio/x-mpegurl
7369      19 audio/x-mpeg
7370      18 video/x-ms-asf
7371      18 video/mpeg
7372      18 audio/x-scpls
7373      18 application/x-ogg
7374      17 audio/x-musepack
7375      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7376      16 video/x-msvideo
7377 &lt;/pre&gt;
7378
7379 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
7380 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
7381 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
7382 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
7383
7384 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
7385 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
7386 </description>
7387         </item>
7388
7389         <item>
7390                 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
7391                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
7392                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
7393                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7394                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
7395 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
7396 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
7397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
7398 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
7399 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
7400 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
7401 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
7402 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
7403 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
7404
7405 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7406 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7407 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7408 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
7409
7410 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7411 Package: package-name
7412 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
7413 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7414
7415 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7416 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
7417
7418 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7419 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
7420
7421 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7422 Package: cheese
7423 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
7424 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7425
7426 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7427 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
7428
7429 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7430 Package: pcmciautils
7431 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7432 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7433
7434 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7435 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
7436
7437 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7438 Package: colorhug-client
7439 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
7440 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7441
7442 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
7443 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
7444 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
7445
7446 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
7447 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
7448 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
7449 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
7450 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
7451 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
7452 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
7453 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
7454
7455 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
7456 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
7457 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
7458 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
7459 try the
7460 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
7461 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
7462 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
7463 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
7464
7465 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
7466 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
7467
7468 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7469 % ./hw-support-lookup
7470 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
7471 &lt;br&gt;%
7472 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7473
7474 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
7475 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
7476
7477 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7478 % ./hw-support-lookup
7479 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
7480 &lt;br&gt;%
7481 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7482
7483 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
7484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
7485 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
7486
7487 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
7488 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
7489 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
7490 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
7491 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
7492 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
7493 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
7494 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
7495
7496 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7497 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7498 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7499 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7500 </description>
7501         </item>
7502
7503         <item>
7504                 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
7505                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
7506                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
7507                 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7508                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
7509 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
7510 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
7511 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
7512 in
7513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
7514 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
7515
7516 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7517
7518 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
7519 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
7520 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
7521 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
7522 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
7523 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
7524
7525 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
7526 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
7527
7528 &lt;pre&gt;
7529 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
7530 &lt;/pre&gt;
7531
7532 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
7533 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
7534
7535 &lt;pre&gt;
7536 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
7537 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
7538 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
7539 %
7540 &lt;/pre&gt;
7541
7542 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7543
7544 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
7545 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
7546
7547 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7548 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
7549 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7550
7551 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
7552
7553 &lt;pre&gt;
7554  v   00008086  (vendor)
7555  d   00002770  (device)
7556  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
7557  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
7558  bc  06        (bus class)
7559  sc  00        (bus subclass)
7560  i   00        (interface)
7561 &lt;/pre&gt;
7562
7563 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
7564 -n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
7565 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
7566 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
7567
7568 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
7569 means.&lt;/p&gt;
7570
7571 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7572
7573 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
7574 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
7575
7576 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7577 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
7578 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7579
7580 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
7581
7582 &lt;pre&gt;
7583  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
7584  p    0001  (device product)
7585  d    0206  (bcddevice)
7586  dc     09  (device class)
7587  dsc    00  (device subclass)
7588  dp     00  (device protocol)
7589  ic     09  (interface class)
7590  isc    00  (interface subclass)
7591  ip     00  (interface protocol)
7592 &lt;/pre&gt;
7593
7594 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
7595 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
7596 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
7597
7598 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7599 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
7600 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
7601 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
7602 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
7603 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7604
7605 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
7606 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
7607 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
7608
7609 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7610
7611 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
7612 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
7613
7614 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7615 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7616 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7617
7618 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
7619
7620 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7621
7622 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
7623 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
7624 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
7625
7626 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7627 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
7628 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7629
7630 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
7631
7632 &lt;pre&gt;
7633  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
7634  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
7635  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
7636  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
7637  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
7638  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
7639  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
7640  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
7641  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
7642  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
7643  ct   10             (chassis type)
7644  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
7645 &lt;/pre&gt;
7646
7647 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
7648 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
7649
7650 &lt;pre&gt;
7651   3 Desktop
7652   4 Low Profile Desktop
7653   5 Pizza Box
7654   6 Mini Tower
7655   7 Tower
7656   8 Portable
7657   9 Laptop
7658  10 Notebook
7659  11 Hand Held
7660  12 Docking Station
7661  13 All In One
7662  14 Sub Notebook
7663  15 Space-saving
7664  16 Lunch Box
7665  17 Main Server Chassis
7666  18 Expansion Chassis
7667  19 Sub Chassis
7668  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
7669  21 Peripheral Chassis
7670  22 RAID Chassis
7671  23 Rack Mount Chassis
7672  24 Sealed-case PC
7673  25 Multi-system
7674  26 CompactPCI
7675  27 AdvancedTCA
7676  28 Blade
7677  29 Blade Enclosing
7678 &lt;/pre&gt;
7679
7680 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7681 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7682 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
7683
7684 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7685
7686 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
7687 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
7688
7689 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
7690 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7691 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7692
7693 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
7694
7695 &lt;pre&gt;
7696   ty  01  (type)
7697   pr  00  (prototype)
7698   id  00  (id)
7699   ex  00  (extra)
7700 &lt;/pre&gt;
7701
7702 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
7703 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
7704
7705 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7706
7707 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7708 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7709 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7710 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7711 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
7712 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7713 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
7714
7715 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7716
7717 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7718 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
7719
7720 &lt;pre&gt;
7721   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
7722     echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
7723     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
7724   done
7725 &lt;/pre&gt;
7726
7727 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
7728 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
7729
7730 &lt;pre&gt;
7731   acpi:ACPI0003:
7732     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
7733   acpi:device:
7734   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
7735   acpi:IBM0068:
7736     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
7737     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
7738     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
7739     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
7740   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7741     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
7742     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
7743     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
7744   [...]
7745 &lt;/pre&gt;
7746
7747 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7748 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7749 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7750 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7751
7752 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
7753 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
7754 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
7755 </description>
7756         </item>
7757
7758         <item>
7759                 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
7760                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
7761                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
7762                 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7763                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
7764 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
7765 Launcher and updated the Debian package
7766 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
7767 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
7768 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
7769 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
7770 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
7771 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
7772 contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
7773 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7774 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
7775 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7776 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
7777 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7778 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
7779 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
7780 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
7781 </description>
7782         </item>
7783
7784         <item>
7785                 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
7786                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
7787                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
7788                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7789                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7790 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7791 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7792 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7793 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7794 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7795 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7796 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7797 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7798 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
7799 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
7800
7801 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
7802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
7803 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
7804 simple:
7805
7806 &lt;ul&gt;
7807
7808 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7809   starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
7810
7811 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7812   hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
7813
7814 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7815   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7816   packages.&lt;/li&gt;
7817
7818 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7819   package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
7820
7821 &lt;/ul&gt;
7822
7823 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7824 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7825 discover database to find packages and
7826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
7827 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
7828
7829 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7830 draft package is now checked into
7831 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
7832 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
7833 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
7834 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7835 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7836 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
7837 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
7838 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7839 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
7840 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
7841 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
7842 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
7843
7844 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7845 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7846 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
7847
7848 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7849
7850 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7851 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
7852 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
7853
7854 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7855 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7856 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
7857 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7858 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7859 reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7860 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
7861
7862 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7863 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
7864 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
7865 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7866 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
7867 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
7868 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7869 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
7870 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
7871
7872 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7873 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7874 </description>
7875         </item>
7876
7877         <item>
7878                 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
7879                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
7880                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
7881                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7882                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7883 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
7884 NXT&lt;/a&gt;.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7885 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7886 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7887 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7888 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
7889 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7890 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7891 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7892
7893 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
7894 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
7895 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
7896 </description>
7897         </item>
7898
7899         <item>
7900                 <title>A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</title>
7901                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</link>
7902                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</guid>
7903                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7904                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
7905 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
7906 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
7907 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
7908 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
7909 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
7910 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
7911 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
7912 cost around NOK 15&amp;nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
7913 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
7914 followed by many others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7915
7916 &lt;p&gt;The public list of donors can be found on
7917 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;the
7918 donation page&lt;/a&gt; for the project, which also contain instructions if
7919 you want to donate to the project.&lt;/p&gt;
7920 </description>
7921         </item>
7922
7923         <item>
7924                 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
7925                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
7926                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
7927                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7928                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7929 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
7930
7931 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
7932 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7933 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7934 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7935 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
7936 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
7937 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7938 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
7939 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7940 name.&lt;/p&gt;
7941
7942 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7943 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7944 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
7945
7946 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7947 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7948 cd bitcoin
7949 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7950 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7951 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7952
7953 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7954 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7955 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7956 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
7957 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7958 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7959 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7960 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7961 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
7962
7963 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7964 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7965 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7966 </description>
7967         </item>
7968
7969         <item>
7970                 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
7971                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
7972                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
7973                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
7974                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
7975 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
7976 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7977 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7978 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
7979 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7980 is now maintained by a
7981 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
7982 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7983 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7984 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7985 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7986 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7987 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7988 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7989 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7990 Corallo in a
7991 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
7992 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7993 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
7994
7995 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7996 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7997 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7998 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7999 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
8000 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
8001 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
8002 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
8003 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
8004 new version to unstable.
8005
8006 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
8007 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
8008 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
8009 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
8010 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
8011 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
8012 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
8013 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
8014 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
8015 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
8016 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
8017 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
8018 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
8019 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
8020 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
8021
8022 &lt;p&gt;My
8023 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
8024 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
8025 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
8026 years ago, as can be
8027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
8028 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
8029 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
8030 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
8031 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
8032 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
8033 the same address as last time,
8034 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8035 </description>
8036         </item>
8037
8038         <item>
8039                 <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
8040                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>
8041                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
8042                 <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8043                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
8044 &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
8045 Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
8046 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
8047 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
8048 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
8049 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
8050 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
8051 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
8052 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
8053
8054 are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
8055 different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
8056 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
8057 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;
8058
8059 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8060 2004-05-27 Book Store
8061       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
8062       Liabilities:Visa
8063 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8064
8065 &lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
8066 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
8067 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
8068 Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
8069 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
8070 Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
8071 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
8072 Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
8073 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
8074 Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
8075 &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
8076 M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
8077 recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;
8078
8079 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
8080 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
8081 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
8082 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
8083 seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;
8084
8085 &lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
8086 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
8087 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
8088 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
8089 play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
8090 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
8091 using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
8092 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
8093 for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
8094 </description>
8095         </item>
8096
8097         <item>
8098                 <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
8099                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>
8100                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
8101                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8102                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
8103 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
8104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
8105 administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
8106 I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
8107 an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
8108 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
8109 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
8110 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
8111 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
8112 Python.&lt;/p&gt;
8113
8114 &lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
8115 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
8116 client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
8117 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
8118 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
8119 simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;
8120
8121 &lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
8122 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
8123 user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;
8124
8125 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8126 #!/usr/bin/env python
8127 import getpass
8128 import xmlrpclib
8129 server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
8130 username = getpass.getuser()
8131 password = getpass.getpass()
8132 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
8133 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
8134 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
8135 print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
8136 result = server.logout(sessionid)
8137 print result
8138 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8139
8140 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
8141 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
8142 </description>
8143         </item>
8144
8145         <item>
8146                 <title>Why isn&#39;t the value of copyright taxed?</title>
8147                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</link>
8148                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</guid>
8149                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8150                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While working on a
8151 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;Norwegian
8152 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig&lt;/a&gt; (76% done),
8153 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
8154 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
8155 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
8156 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.&lt;/p&gt;
8157
8158 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
8159 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
8160 -15-30-19-00/&quot;&gt;presentation
8161 by John Perry Barlow&lt;/a&gt;, and concluded that it was best to put it
8162 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
8163 argument that copyrighted works are &quot;intellectual property&quot;, as the
8164 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
8165 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
8166 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I&#39;m sharing the idea here to
8167 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
8168 arguments.&lt;/p&gt;
8169
8170 &lt;p&gt;Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
8171 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
8172 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
8173 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
8174 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
8175 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
8176 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
8177 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;
8178
8179 &lt;p&gt;If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
8180 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
8181 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
8182 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
8183 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
8184 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
8185 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
8186 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
8187 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
8188 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
8189 correct right holder.&lt;/p&gt;
8190
8191 &lt;p&gt;If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
8192 they will have a small incentive to &quot;disown&quot; their copyright, and let
8193 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
8194 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
8195 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
8196 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
8197 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
8198 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
8199 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
8200 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
8201 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
8202 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
8203 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
8204 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;
8205
8206 &lt;p&gt;The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
8207 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
8208 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .&lt;/p&gt;
8209
8210 &lt;p&gt;Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
8211 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.&lt;/p&gt;
8212 </description>
8213         </item>
8214
8215         <item>
8216                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</title>
8217                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</link>
8218                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</guid>
8219                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8220                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is another interview with one of the people in the &lt;a
8221 href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
8222 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
8223 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
8224 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
8225 the people behind the German
8226 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/&quot;&gt;IT-Zukunft Schule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
8227 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
8228 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8229
8230 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8231
8232 &lt;p&gt;I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
8233 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with &quot;my man&quot; Mike Gabriel, my
8234 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
8235
8236 &lt;p&gt;At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
8237 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
8238 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
8239 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
8240 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
8241 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.&lt;/p&gt;
8242
8243 &lt;p&gt;In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
8244 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
8245 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
8246 working in our own school project &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; in North
8247 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
8248 relationship management and the communication processes in the
8249 project.&lt;/p&gt;
8250
8251 &lt;p&gt;Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
8252 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
8253 and a yoga teacher.&lt;/p&gt;
8254
8255 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8256 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8257
8258 &lt;p&gt;I fell in love with Mike ;-).&lt;/p&gt;
8259
8260 &lt;p&gt;Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
8261 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
8262 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
8263 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
8264 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
8265 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
8266 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
8267 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
8268 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
8269 parents.&lt;/p&gt;
8270
8271 &lt;p&gt;Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
8272 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
8273 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
8274 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
8275 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
8276 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
8277 Germany.&lt;/p&gt;
8278
8279 &lt;p&gt;For information about our school project you can read
8280 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html&quot;&gt;the
8281 interview with Mike Gabriel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8282
8283 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8284 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8285
8286 &lt;p&gt;First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
8287 answer comes rather from a social point of view.&lt;/p&gt;
8288
8289 &lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
8290 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
8291 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
8292 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
8293 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
8294 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
8295 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
8296 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
8297 teachers, parents...&lt;/p&gt;
8298
8299 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8300 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8301
8302 &lt;p&gt;I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
8303 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
8304
8305 &lt;p&gt;What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
8306 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
8307 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
8308 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
8309 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
8310
8311 &lt;p&gt;Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
8312 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
8313 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
8314 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
8315 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
8316 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
8317 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
8318
8319 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8320
8321 &lt;p&gt;On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
8322 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
8323 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
8324 my N900 running with Maemo.&lt;/p&gt;
8325
8326 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8327 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8328
8329 &lt;p&gt;I am really convinced that in our school project &quot;IT-Zukunft
8330 Schule&quot; we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
8331 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
8332 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
8333 strategy has three crucial pillars:&lt;/p&gt;
8334
8335 &lt;ul&gt;
8336
8337 &lt;li&gt;We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
8338 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
8339 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.&lt;/li&gt;
8340
8341 &lt;li&gt;Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
8342 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
8343 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
8344 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
8345 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
8346 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
8347 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.&lt;/li&gt;
8348
8349 &lt;li&gt;Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
8350 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
8351 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
8352 offer to become more and more independent from us.&lt;/li&gt;
8353
8354 &lt;/ul&gt;
8355 </description>
8356         </item>
8357
8358         <item>
8359                 <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
8360                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
8361                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
8362                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8363                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
8364 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
8365 a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
8366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
8367 see how a member of the bitcoin community
8368 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
8369 the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
8370 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
8371 competition.  My thoughts go to the
8372 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
8373 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
8374 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
8375 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
8376 powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;
8377
8378 &lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
8379 that the community already seem to have
8380 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
8381 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
8382 how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
8383 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
8384 wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
8385 </description>
8386         </item>
8387
8388         <item>
8389                 <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
8390                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
8391                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
8392                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8393                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
8394 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
8395 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
8396 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG association&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn
8397 make me a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt;.  NUUG
8398 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
8399 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
8400 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
8401 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
8402 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt; in the
8403 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
8404 it every time.&lt;/p&gt;
8405
8406 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
8407 article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/&quot;&gt;Stuart Kendrick&lt;/a&gt; from
8408 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
8409 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down&quot;&gt;What
8410 Takes Us Down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (longer version also
8411 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf&quot;&gt;available
8412 from his own site&lt;/a&gt;), where he report what he found when he
8413 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
8414 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
8415 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
8416 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
8417 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.&lt;p&gt;
8418
8419 &lt;p&gt;The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
8420 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
8421 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
8422 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
8423 article: First the unplanned outage:
8424
8425 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8426 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
8427 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
8428 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
8429 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
8430 Duration:    40 minutes
8431 Scope:       Exchange 2003
8432 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
8433              a cluster failover.
8434
8435 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
8436              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
8437 Technician:  [xxx]
8438 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8439
8440 Next the planned outage:
8441
8442 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8443 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
8444 Severity:    Major (Planned)
8445 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
8446 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
8447 Duration:    10 hours
8448 Scope:       H2 Transport
8449 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
8450              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
8451              4510s.
8452 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
8453              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
8454              connectivity.
8455 Technician:  [xxx]
8456 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8457
8458 &lt;p&gt;He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
8459 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
8460 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
8461 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
8462 people to write &#39;2012-06-16 06:00 +0000&#39; instead of the start time
8463 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
8464 that could be improved, read the article for the details.&lt;/p&gt;
8465
8466 &lt;p&gt;I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
8467 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
8468 university too.  We do register
8469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/&quot;&gt;planned
8470 changes and outages in a calendar&lt;/a&gt;, and report the to a mailing
8471 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
8472 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
8473 for other sites to consider too?&lt;/p&gt;
8474 </description>
8475         </item>
8476
8477         <item>
8478                 <title>Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</title>
8479                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</link>
8480                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</guid>
8481                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8482                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
8483 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/&quot;&gt;how
8484 Amazon erased the books from a customer&#39;s kindle, locked the account
8485 and refuse to tell the customer why&lt;/a&gt;.  If a real book store did
8486 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
8487 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
8488 background information is available in Norwegian from
8489 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;.
8490 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
8491 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
8492 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
8493 willing to
8494 &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html&quot;&gt;
8495 break into customers equipment and remove the books&lt;/a&gt; people had
8496 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
8497 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
8498 sounded like
8499 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html&quot;&gt;Amazon
8500 would never do that again&lt;/a&gt;.  And here we are, three years
8501 later.&lt;/p&gt;
8502
8503 &lt;p&gt;And thought this action is
8504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende&quot;&gt;against
8505 Norwegian regulations and law&lt;/a&gt;, it is according to the terms of use
8506 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
8507 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
8508 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
8509 rights.&lt;/p&gt;
8510
8511 &lt;p&gt;Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
8512 unacceptable terms.  For example
8513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about 40,000
8514 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt; (1,652
8515 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The Internet
8516 Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
8517 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
8518
8519 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
8520 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
8521 restored the account of the user, as reported by
8522 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;
8523 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt;.
8524 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
8525 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
8526 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
8527 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
8528 reading two opinions from
8529 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm&quot;&gt;Simon
8530 Phipps&lt;/a&gt; and
8531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm&quot;&gt;Glen
8532 Moody&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
8533 details about the original story.&lt;/p&gt;
8534 </description>
8535         </item>
8536
8537         <item>
8538                 <title>The fight for freedom and privacy</title>
8539                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</link>
8540                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</guid>
8541                 <pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8542                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
8543 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
8544 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
8545 across a marvellous drawing by
8546 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/about.html&quot;&gt;Clay Bennett&lt;/a&gt;
8547 visualising some of what is going on.
8548
8549 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html&quot;&gt;
8550 &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8551
8552 &lt;blockquote&gt;
8553 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
8554 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
8555 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
8556
8557 &lt;p&gt;Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
8558 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
8559 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
8560 just remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon&quot;&gt;the
8561 Panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, and can not help to think that we are slowly
8562 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.&lt;/p&gt;
8563 </description>
8564         </item>
8565
8566         <item>
8567                 <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
8568                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
8569                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
8570                 <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8571                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to a blog post by
8572 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html&quot;&gt;Eddy
8573 Petrișor&lt;/a&gt;, I became aware of yet another &quot;alternative medicine&quot;
8574 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
8575 According to the originating blog post about the detox &quot;cure&quot;
8576 &lt;a href=&quot;http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/&quot;&gt;ColonHelp
8577 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions&lt;/a&gt;, the producer
8578 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
8579 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
8580 wordpress.com, and they reply was &quot;We can confirm that Zenyth is
8581 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
8582 don&#39;t believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
8583 matter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
8584
8585 &lt;p&gt;The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
8586 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
8587 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
8588 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
8589 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
8590 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
8591 to argue its side.&lt;/p&gt;
8592
8593 &lt;p&gt;This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
8594 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
8595 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect&quot;&gt;Streisand
8596 effect&lt;/a&gt; can make it rethink its strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
8597
8598 &lt;p&gt;What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
8599 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html&quot;&gt;a list of
8600 victims of detoxification&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8601 </description>
8602         </item>
8603
8604         <item>
8605                 <title>Why is your local library collecting the &quot;wrong&quot; computer books?</title>
8606                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</link>
8607                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</guid>
8608                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Oct 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8609                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
8610 &lt;a href=&quot;http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge&quot;&gt;about
8611 the computer science book collection available in his local
8612 library&lt;/a&gt;, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
8613 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
8614 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
8615 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
8616 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
8617 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
8618 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
8619 recently published books.&lt;/p&gt;
8620
8621 &lt;p&gt;During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
8622 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
8623 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
8624 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
8625 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
8626 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
8627 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
8628 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
8629 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
8630 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens&quot;&gt;Stevens
8631 collection&lt;/a&gt;).  I picked several of the generic O&#39;Reilly books (ie
8632 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
8633 products) and stayed away from the &#39;teach yourself X in N days&#39; class.
8634 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
8635 for the library that evening.&lt;/p&gt;
8636
8637 &lt;p&gt;The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
8638 going to know that for example
8639 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming&quot;&gt;The
8640 Practice of Programming&lt;/a&gt; is a must-have in any computer library,
8641 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
8642 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
8643 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
8644 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
8645 book right away.&lt;/p&gt;
8646 </description>
8647         </item>
8648
8649         <item>
8650                 <title>Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</title>
8651                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
8652                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
8653                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
8654                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian &lt;a
8655 href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book &lt;a
8656 href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
8657 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
8658 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
8659 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
8660
8661 When I started, I
8662 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
8663 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
8664 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
8665 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
8666 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
8667 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
8668 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:&lt;/p&gt;
8669
8670 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
8671
8672 &lt;p&gt;Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
8673 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
8674 the project files currently available from
8675 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8676
8677 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8678 the updated
8679 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
8680 and
8681 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
8682 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8683 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8684 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
8685 </description>
8686         </item>
8687
8688         <item>
8689                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</title>
8690                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</link>
8691                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</guid>
8692                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
8693                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
8694 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
8695 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
8696 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
8697 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
8698 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
8699 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.&lt;/p&gt;
8700
8701 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8702
8703 &lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
8704 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of &quot;light&quot;
8705 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
8706 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
8707 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
8708 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
8709 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
8710 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
8711 training is anyway very important&lt;/p&gt;
8712
8713 &lt;p&gt;I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
8714 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spse.ch/&quot;&gt;SPSE school&lt;/a&gt; (secondary) is a very
8715 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
8716 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
8717 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
8718
8719 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8720 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8721
8722 &lt;p&gt;Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
8723 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
8724 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn&#39;t
8725 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
8726 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
8727 hole.&lt;/p&gt;
8728
8729 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8730 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8731
8732 &lt;p&gt;Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
8733 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
8734 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
8735 engineered platform and you don&#39;t have to start to build up your PDC
8736 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I&#39;ve already done this once and I
8737 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
8738 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
8739 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
8740 hassle.&lt;/p&gt;
8741
8742 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8743 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8744
8745 &lt;p&gt;The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
8746 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
8747 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
8748 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
8749 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
8750 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
8751 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
8752 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)&lt;/p&gt;
8753
8754 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8755
8756 &lt;p&gt;I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
8757 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
8758 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
8759 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html&quot;&gt;Perceus&lt;/a&gt;
8760 has the same...&lt;/p&gt;
8761
8762 &lt;p&gt;For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
8763 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
8764 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
8765 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.&lt;/p&gt;
8766
8767 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8768 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8769
8770 &lt;P&gt;I think that the only real argument that school managers &quot;hear&quot; is
8771 cost reduction. They don&#39;t give too much weight on quality, stability,
8772 just because they are normally not open to change.&lt;/p&gt;
8773
8774 &lt;p&gt;Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
8775 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
8776 don&#39;t.&lt;/p&gt;
8777
8778 &lt;p&gt;We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
8779 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
8780 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
8781 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
8782 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
8783 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
8784 Those who don&#39;t have such needs will hardly move to Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
8785 </description>
8786         </item>
8787
8788         <item>
8789                 <title>IETF activity to standardise video codec</title>
8790                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</link>
8791                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</guid>
8792                 <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8793                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After the
8794 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html&quot;&gt;Opus
8795 codec made&lt;/a&gt; it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; as
8796 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716&lt;/a&gt;, I had a look
8797 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
8798 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
8799 area.  A non-&quot;working group&quot; mailing list
8800 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec&quot;&gt;video-codec&lt;/a&gt;
8801 was
8802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html&quot;&gt;created 2012-08-20&lt;/a&gt;.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
8803 formal working group should be formed.&lt;/p&gt;
8804
8805 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
8806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html&quot;&gt;an
8807 email from someone&lt;/a&gt; in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
8808 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
8809 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
8810 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
8811 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
8812 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
8813
8814 &lt;p&gt;If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
8815 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
8816 IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
8817 </description>
8818         </item>
8819
8820         <item>
8821                 <title>IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</title>
8822                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</link>
8823                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</guid>
8824                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8825                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; announced the
8826 publication of of
8827 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716, the Definition
8828 of the Opus Audio Codec&lt;/a&gt;, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
8829 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
8830 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
8831 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, IETF
8832 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
8833 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
8834 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
8835 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
8836 multimedia content on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
8837
8838 &lt;p&gt;IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
8839 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
8840 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
8841 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
8842
8843 &lt;p&gt;Visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opus-codec.org/&quot;&gt;Opus project page&lt;/a&gt; if
8844 you want to learn more about the solution.&lt;/p&gt;
8845 </description>
8846         </item>
8847
8848         <item>
8849                 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
8850                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
8851                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
8852                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8853                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
8854 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
8855 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8856 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8857 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
8858 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8859
8860 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8861 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8862 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8863 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
8864
8865 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8866 PostScript formats at
8867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
8868 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8869 </description>
8870         </item>
8871
8872         <item>
8873                 <title>Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don&#39;t forget Officeshots)</title>
8874                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</link>
8875                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</guid>
8876                 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8877                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
8878 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233&quot;&gt;Microsoft
8879 have been forced to open Office&lt;/a&gt;, and it made me remember and
8880 revisit the great site
8881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;officeshots&lt;/a&gt; which allow you
8882 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
8883 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8884 </description>
8885         </item>
8886
8887         <item>
8888                 <title>Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</title>
8889                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
8890                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
8891                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8892                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
8893 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
8894 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
8895 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
8896 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
8897 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
8898 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
8899 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
8900 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
8901 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
8902 summer I
8903 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
8904 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, and I have been able to secure the
8905 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.&lt;/p&gt;
8906
8907 &lt;p&gt;Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
8908 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
8909 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
8910 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
8911 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
8912 progress:&lt;/p&gt;
8913
8914 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
8915
8916 &lt;p&gt;The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
8917 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
8918 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
8919 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
8920 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
8921 english version of the docbook source.&lt;/p&gt;
8922
8923 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
8924 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
8925 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
8926 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
8927 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
8928 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
8929 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
8930 project files currently available from &lt;a
8931 href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8932
8933 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8934 the updated
8935 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
8936 and
8937 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
8938 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8939 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8940 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
8941 </description>
8942         </item>
8943
8944         <item>
8945                 <title>Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</title>
8946                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</link>
8947                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</guid>
8948                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8949                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; one can specify
8950 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
8951 this information to pick the correct translations for &#39;chapter&#39;, &#39;see
8952 also&#39;, &#39;index&#39; etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
8953 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
8954 with &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;de&quot;&amp;gt;, and the document will show up with the
8955 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
8956 case for the language
8957 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html&quot;&gt;I
8958 am working with at the moment&lt;/a&gt;, Norwegian Bokmål.&lt;/p&gt;
8959
8960 &lt;p&gt;For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
8961 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
8962 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
8963 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
8964 of them do not handle it at all.&lt;/p&gt;
8965
8966 &lt;p&gt;A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
8967 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
8968 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
8969 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
8970 is &#39;no&#39;, Norwegian Nynorsk is &#39;nn&#39; and Norwegian Bokmål is &#39;nb&#39;.
8971 Historically the &#39;no&#39; language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
8972 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
8973 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
8974 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure &#39;no&#39; was an
8975 alias for &#39;nb&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
8976
8977 &lt;p&gt;Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
8978 understand &#39;nn&#39;.  There are translations for &#39;no&#39;, but not &#39;nb&#39; (BTS
8979 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/684391&quot;&gt;#684391&lt;/a&gt;), but due to a bug
8980 (BTS &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;#682936&lt;/a&gt;) the &#39;no&#39;
8981 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
8982 recognise &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The xmlto tool only recognise
8983 &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The end result that there is no language
8984 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
8985 at the same time. :(&lt;/p&gt;
8986
8987 &lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to use &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;nb&quot;&amp;gt;, but it will
8988 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
8989 processors. :(&lt;/p&gt;
8990
8991 &lt;p&gt;Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/&lt;/p&gt;
8992 </description>
8993         </item>
8994
8995         <item>
8996                 <title>Best way to create a docbook book?</title>
8997                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</link>
8998                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</guid>
8999                 <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9000                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I tried to send this text to the
9001 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/&quot;&gt;docbook-apps
9002 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org&lt;/a&gt;, but it only accept messages
9003 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
9004 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
9005 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
9006 out.&lt;/p&gt;
9007
9008 &lt;p&gt;I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
9009 learning curve at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
9010
9011 &lt;p&gt;To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
9012 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
9013 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
9014 available from
9015 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
9016 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
9017 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
9018 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
9019 Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
9020
9021 &lt;p&gt;I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
9022 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
9023 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
9024 problems.&lt;/p&gt;
9025
9026 &lt;ul&gt;
9027
9028 &lt;li&gt;Using dblatex, the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt; handling is not the way I want to,
9029    as &amp;lt;/part&amp;gt; do not really end the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt;. (See
9030    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683166&quot;&gt;BTS report #683166&lt;/a&gt;), the
9031    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
9032    index references spanning several pages (See
9033    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682901&quot;&gt;BTS report #682901&lt;/a&gt;), and
9034    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
9035    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;BTS report #682936&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
9036
9037 &lt;li&gt;Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
9038    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683163&quot;&gt;BTS report
9039    #683163&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
9040
9041 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
9042    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
9043    footnote and text body, see
9044    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683197&quot;&gt;BTS report #683197&lt;/a&gt;), and
9045    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
9046    refs listed are not right).&lt;/li&gt;
9047
9048 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.&lt;/li&gt;
9049
9050 &lt;li&gt;Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
9051    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.&lt;/li&gt;
9052
9053 &lt;/ul&gt;
9054
9055 &lt;p&gt;So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
9056 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
9057 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?&lt;/p&gt;
9058
9059 &lt;p&gt;What about HTML and EPUB versions?&lt;/p&gt;
9060 </description>
9061         </item>
9062
9063         <item>
9064                 <title>Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</title>
9065                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</link>
9066                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</guid>
9067                 <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9068                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I reported earlier that I am working on
9069 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;a
9070 norwegian version&lt;/a&gt; of the book
9071 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
9072 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
9073 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
9074 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
9075 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9076
9077 &lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
9078 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
9079 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
9080 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
9081 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
9082 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
9083 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
9084 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
9085 print. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9086
9087 &lt;p&gt;The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
9088 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
9089 language.&lt;/p&gt;
9090 </description>
9091         </item>
9092
9093         <item>
9094                 <title>Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</title>
9095                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
9096                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
9097                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9098                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a
9099 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;project
9100 to translate&lt;/a&gt; the book
9101 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig
9102 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
9103 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version, to
9104 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
9105 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
9106 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
9107 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9108
9109 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
9110 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
9111 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
9112 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
9113 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
9114 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
9115 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
9116 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
9117 send pull requests with fixes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9118 </description>
9119         </item>
9120
9121         <item>
9122                 <title>Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
9123                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</link>
9124                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</guid>
9125                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2012 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9126                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
9127 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project have users all over the globe, but until
9128 recently we have not known about any users in Norway&#39;s neighbour
9129 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
9130 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
9131 to adjust and scale the just released
9132 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
9133 Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
9134 happy to share his answers with you here.&lt;/p&gt;
9135
9136 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9137
9138 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
9139 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
9140 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
9141 &quot;folkhighschool&quot; teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
9142 Norwegian I believe it&#39;s called &quot;Vuxenupplaring&quot;. I also have a master
9143 in &quot;Technology and social change&quot;. So I&#39;m not really a tech guy, I
9144 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
9145 perspective when working with IT.&lt;/p&gt;
9146
9147 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9148 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9149
9150 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
9151 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
9152 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
9153 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
9154 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
9155 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
9156
9157 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9158 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9159
9160 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
9161 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
9162 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
9163 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
9164 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
9165 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
9166 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
9167 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
9168 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
9169 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to &quot;beat around the bush&quot; by
9170 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
9171 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
9172 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
9173 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
9174 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
9175 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
9176 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
9177 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
9178 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
9179 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
9180 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
9181 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit &quot;oldish&quot; applications. Debian is
9182 quicker to update.
9183
9184 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9185 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9186
9187 &lt;p&gt;Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
9188 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
9189 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
9190 sound from working with them.  It&#39;s a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
9191 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
9192 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.&lt;/p&gt;
9193
9194 &lt;p&gt;I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
9195 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
9196 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
9197 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
9198 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
9199 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
9200 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
9201 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
9202 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
9203 some applications can&#39;t be open source. As for us we really need to
9204 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
9205 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
9206 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
9207 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
9208 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;
9209
9210 &lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
9211 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
9212 market to Adobe. The only &quot;equivalent&quot; to InDesign in the opensource
9213 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
9214 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
9215 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
9216 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
9217 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;
9218
9219 &lt;p&gt;We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
9220 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
9221 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
9222 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
9223 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
9224 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
9225 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
9226 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
9227 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
9228 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
9229 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
9230 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
9231 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
9232 sound file.&lt;/p&gt;
9233
9234 &lt;p&gt;So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
9235 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
9236 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
9237 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
9238 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
9239 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
9240 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
9241 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
9242 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.&lt;/p&gt;
9243
9244 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9245
9246 &lt;p&gt;Myself I&#39;m running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
9247 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
9248 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
9249 )&lt;/p&gt;
9250
9251 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9252 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9253
9254 &lt;p&gt;To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
9255 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
9256 it&#39;s also very important that the multimedia support is working
9257 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
9258 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
9259 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
9260 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
9261 idea. It&#39;s also important that the open source software works even for
9262 the administration.  It&#39;s hard to convince the teachers to stick with
9263 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
9264 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
9265 will create a difference in &quot;status&quot; between classes, so a good
9266 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
9267 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
9268 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.&lt;/p&gt;
9269
9270 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
9271 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
9272 article &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/&quot;&gt;Radio station
9273 management with Airtime&lt;/a&gt;,
9274 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/&quot;&gt;Airtime&lt;/a&gt; which
9275 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
9276 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivendellaudio.org/&quot;&gt;Rivendell&lt;/a&gt; which claim to
9277 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
9278 useful to the aspiring radio producer.&lt;/p&gt;
9279 </description>
9280         </item>
9281
9282         <item>
9283                 <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
9284                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
9285                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
9286                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
9287                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
9288 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
9289 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
9290 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
9291 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
9292 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
9293 Steinberg in his blog post
9294 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/&quot;&gt;Can
9295 you recognize the million pound chair?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Read it and weep for the
9296 spending of your tax money.&lt;/p&gt;
9297
9298 &lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
9299 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
9300 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
9301 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
9302 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
9303 purchases.&lt;/p&gt;
9304 </description>
9305         </item>
9306
9307         <item>
9308                 <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
9309                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
9310                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
9311                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9312                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
9313 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is a large collection of end user and school specific
9314 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
9315 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
9316 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
9317 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
9318 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
9319 receive.  The software is
9320
9321 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/&quot;&gt;named FET&lt;/a&gt;, and it provide a
9322 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
9323 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
9324 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
9325 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html&quot;&gt;Linux, MacOSX and
9326 Windows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9327
9328 &lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html&quot;&gt;the
9329 feature list&lt;/a&gt;, liftet from the project web site:&lt;/p&gt;
9330
9331 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
9332
9333   &lt;li&gt;FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
9334     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it &lt;/li&gt;
9335
9336   &lt;li&gt;Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
9337     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
9338     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
9339     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
9340     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
9341     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
9342     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
9343     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
9344     &lt;/li&gt;
9345
9346   &lt;li&gt;Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
9347     semi-automatic or manual allocation&lt;/li&gt;
9348
9349   &lt;li&gt;Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
9350     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports &lt;/li&gt;
9351
9352   &lt;li&gt;Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
9353     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)&lt;/li&gt;
9354
9355   &lt;li&gt;Import/export from CSV format&lt;/li&gt;
9356
9357   &lt;li&gt;The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
9358     formats &lt;/li&gt;
9359
9360   &lt;li&gt;Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
9361     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
9362     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
9363     (as separate sets)&lt;/li&gt;
9364
9365   &lt;li&gt;Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
9366     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
9367     percentage)&lt;/li&gt;
9368
9369   &lt;li&gt;Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
9370     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
9371     memory):
9372     &lt;ul&gt;
9373       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60&lt;/li&gt;
9374       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of working days per week: 35&lt;/li&gt;
9375       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of teachers: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
9376       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
9377       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of subjects: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
9378       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of activity tags&lt;/li&gt;
9379       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of activities: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
9380       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of rooms: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
9381       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of buildings: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
9382       &lt;li&gt;Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
9383           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
9384           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
9385           activity)&lt;/li&gt;
9386       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
9387       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of space constraints&lt;/li&gt;
9388     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9389
9390   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
9391     &lt;ul&gt;
9392       &lt;li&gt;Break periods&lt;/li&gt;
9393       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
9394         &lt;ul&gt;
9395           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
9396           &lt;li&gt;Max/min days per week&lt;/li&gt;
9397           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
9398           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
9399           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
9400           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
9401
9402           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9403             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
9404         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9405       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
9406         &lt;ul&gt;
9407           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
9408           &lt;li&gt;Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)&lt;/li&gt;
9409           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
9410           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
9411           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
9412           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
9413
9414           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
9415             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
9416         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9417       &lt;li&gt;For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
9418         &lt;ul&gt;
9419           &lt;li&gt;A single preferred starting time&lt;/li&gt;
9420           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred starting times&lt;/li&gt;
9421           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred time slots&lt;/li&gt;
9422           &lt;li&gt;Min/max days between them&lt;/li&gt;
9423           &lt;li&gt;End(s) students day&lt;/li&gt;
9424           &lt;li&gt;Same starting time/day/hour&lt;/li&gt;
9425           &lt;li&gt;Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
9426             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)&lt;/li&gt;
9427           &lt;li&gt;Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)&lt;/li&gt;
9428           &lt;li&gt;Not overlapping&lt;/li&gt;
9429           &lt;li&gt;Max simultaneous in selected time slots&lt;/li&gt;
9430           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities&lt;/li&gt;
9431         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9432     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9433
9434   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
9435     &lt;ul&gt;
9436       &lt;li&gt;Room not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
9437       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
9438         &lt;ul&gt;
9439           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
9440           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
9441           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
9442         &lt;/ul&gt;
9443       &lt;/li&gt;
9444
9445       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
9446         &lt;ul&gt;
9447           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
9448           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
9449           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
9450         &lt;/ul&gt;
9451       &lt;/li&gt;
9452       &lt;li&gt;Preferred room(s):
9453         &lt;ul&gt;
9454           &lt;li&gt;For a subject&lt;/li&gt;
9455           &lt;li&gt;For an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
9456           &lt;li&gt;For a subject and an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
9457           &lt;li&gt;Individually for a (sub)activity&lt;/li&gt;
9458         &lt;/ul&gt;
9459       &lt;/li&gt;
9460
9461       &lt;li&gt;For a set of activities:
9462         &lt;ul&gt;
9463           &lt;li&gt;Occupy a maximum number of different rooms&lt;/li&gt;
9464         &lt;/ul&gt;
9465       &lt;/li&gt;
9466     &lt;/ul&gt;
9467   &lt;/li&gt;
9468 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9469
9470 &lt;p&gt;I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
9471 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
9472 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
9473 manually, check it out.
9474
9475 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
9476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/&quot;&gt;a
9477 blog post from MarvelSoft&lt;/a&gt;.  If you find FET useful, please provide
9478 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
9479 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos&quot;&gt;Debian Edu HowTo
9480 section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9481 </description>
9482         </item>
9483
9484         <item>
9485                 <title>Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</title>
9486                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</link>
9487                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</guid>
9488                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jul 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9489                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the NUUG &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;
9490 project (Norwegian version of
9491 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; from
9492 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt;), we have discovered
9493 a problem with the municipalities using
9494 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbra.com/&quot;&gt;Zimbra&lt;/a&gt;.  When FiksGataMi send a
9495 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
9496 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
9497 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
9498 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
9499 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
9500 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
9501 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
9502 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
9503 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
9504 the From: header.&lt;/p&gt;
9505
9506 &lt;p&gt;This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
9507 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
9508 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
9509 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
9510 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
9511 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
9512 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
9513 behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;
9514
9515 &lt;p&gt;The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
9516 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
9517 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
9518 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
9519 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
9520 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
9521 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9522 </description>
9523         </item>
9524
9525         <item>
9526                 <title>Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</title>
9527                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</link>
9528                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</guid>
9529                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9530                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
9531 another interview with the people behind
9532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
9533 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
9534 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
9535 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
9536 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
9537 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
9538 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
9539
9540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9541
9542 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
9543 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
9544 ICT in schools&lt;/p&gt;
9545
9546 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9547 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9548
9549 &lt;p&gt;At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
9550 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
9551 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
9552 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
9553
9554 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9555 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9556
9557 &lt;p&gt;A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
9558 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
9559 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
9560 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
9561
9562 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9563 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9564
9565 &lt;p&gt;Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
9566 economical and technical resources in the different countries don&#39;t
9567 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
9568 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
9569 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
9570 technologies in school.&lt;/p&gt;
9571
9572 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9573
9574 &lt;p&gt;Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
9575 between Iceweasel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geany.org/&quot;&gt;Geany&lt;/a&gt; and
9576 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator&quot;&gt;Terminator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9577
9578 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9579 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9580
9581 &lt;p&gt;I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
9582 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
9583 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
9584 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
9585
9586 &lt;p&gt;Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
9587 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
9588 universities. So different strategies are needed.&lt;/p&gt;
9589
9590 &lt;p&gt;But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
9591 we&#39;ve done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
9592 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
9593 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
9594 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
9595 using wireless. I think we&#39;ll see more and more personal devices in
9596 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
9597 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
9598 working there.&lt;/p&gt;
9599 </description>
9600         </item>
9601
9602         <item>
9603                 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
9604                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
9605                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
9606                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9607                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
9608 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
9609 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
9610 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
9611 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
9612 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
9613 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
9614 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
9615 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
9616 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
9617 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
9618
9619 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
9620 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
9621 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
9622 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
9623 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
9624 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
9625 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
9626 </description>
9627         </item>
9628
9629         <item>
9630                 <title>Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</title>
9631                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</link>
9632                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</guid>
9633                 <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9634                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During my work on
9635 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
9636 based on Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;, I came across some issues that should be
9637 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
9638 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
9639 explanation.&lt;/p&gt;
9640
9641 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
9642
9643 &lt;li&gt;We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
9644 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
9645 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
9646 system depend on tasksel tasks in
9647 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
9648 installation.&lt;/li&gt;
9649
9650 &lt;li&gt;Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
9651 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
9652 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
9653 at least try to enable it for these services:
9654 &lt;ul&gt;
9655
9656   &lt;li&gt;CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
9657     quotas.&lt;/li&gt;
9658   &lt;li&gt;Nagios for admins checking the system status.&lt;/li&gt;
9659   &lt;li&gt;GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.&lt;/li&gt;
9660   &lt;li&gt;LDAP for admins updating LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
9661   &lt;li&gt;Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.&lt;/li&gt;
9662   &lt;li&gt;ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.&lt;/li&gt;
9663
9664 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9665
9666 &lt;li&gt;When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
9667 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
9668 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
9669 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind&lt;/li&gt;
9670
9671 &lt;li&gt;Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
9672 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
9673 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.&lt;/li&gt;
9674
9675 &lt;li&gt;Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
9676 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
9677 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/653305&quot;&gt;BTS report #653305&lt;/a&gt; and the
9678 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
9679 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
9680 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.&lt;/li&gt;
9681
9682 &lt;li&gt;Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
9683 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
9684 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
9685 in Wheezy.
9686
9687 &lt;li&gt;Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
9688 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
9689 up KDE login on slow networks.&lt;/li&gt;
9690
9691 &lt;li&gt;Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
9692 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
9693 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
9694 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.&lt;/li&gt;
9695
9696 &lt;li&gt;Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
9697 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
9698 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
9699 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..&lt;/li&gt;
9700
9701 &lt;li&gt;We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
9702 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
9703 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.&lt;/li&gt;
9704
9705 &lt;li&gt;We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
9706 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
9707 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.&lt;/li&gt;
9708
9709 &lt;li&gt;We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
9710 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
9711 requested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/588968&quot;&gt;BTS report
9712 #588968&lt;/a&gt; and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
9713 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.&lt;/li&gt;
9714
9715 &lt;li&gt;We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
9716 &lt;ul&gt;
9717
9718 &lt;li&gt;reduce the number of chemistry visualisers&lt;/li&gt;
9719 &lt;li&gt;consider dropping xpaint&lt;/li&gt;
9720 &lt;li&gt;and probably more?&lt;/li&gt;
9721 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9722
9723 &lt;li&gt;Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
9724 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
9725 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
9726 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
9727 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
9728 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
9729 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
9730 for the LTSP chroot).&lt;/li&gt;
9731
9732
9733 &lt;li&gt;In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
9734 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
9735 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
9736 use.&lt;/li&gt;
9737
9738 &lt;li&gt;The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
9739 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
9740 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
9741 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
9742 new applications with a simple mouse click.&lt;/li&gt;
9743
9744 &lt;li&gt;The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
9745 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
9746 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
9747 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
9748 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
9749 instead of the &quot;it is documented&quot; method of today.&lt;/li&gt;
9750
9751 &lt;li&gt;A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
9752 &quot;take over&quot; the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
9753 There are at least three implementations,
9754 &lt;a href=&quot;italc.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;italc&lt;/a&gt;,
9755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itais.net/help/en/&quot;&gt;controlaula&lt;/a&gt; og
9756 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epoptes.org/&quot;&gt;epoptes&lt;/a&gt; and we should pick one of
9757 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
9758 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
9759 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
9760 given room.&lt;/li&gt;
9761
9762 &lt;li&gt;Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
9763 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
9764 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
9765 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
9766 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
9767 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
9768 investigated.&lt;/li&gt;
9769
9770 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9771
9772 &lt;p&gt;I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
9773 version.&lt;/p&gt;
9774 </description>
9775         </item>
9776
9777         <item>
9778                 <title>TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</title>
9779                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</link>
9780                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</guid>
9781                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9782                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
9783 &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year&quot;&gt;TV
9784 with face recognition&lt;/a&gt; to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
9785 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
9786 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
9787 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
9788 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
9789 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
9790 be willing to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;
9791
9792 &lt;p&gt;I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
9793 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
9794 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
9795 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&quot;&gt;1984 by George
9796 Orwell&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9797 </description>
9798         </item>
9799
9800         <item>
9801                 <title>Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</title>
9802                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</link>
9803                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</guid>
9804                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
9805                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
9806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html&quot;&gt;I
9807 reported how to get&lt;/a&gt; the support status out of Dell using an
9808 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
9809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html&quot;&gt;discovered
9810 by Daniel De Marco in february&lt;/a&gt;.  Combined with my web scraping
9811 code for HP, Dell and IBM
9812 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;from
9813 2009&lt;/a&gt;, I got inspired and wrote
9814 &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/&quot;&gt;a
9815 web service&lt;/a&gt; based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
9816 support status and get a machine readable result back.&lt;/p&gt;
9817
9818 &lt;p&gt;This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
9819 output:
9820
9821 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9822 % GET &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&quot;&gt;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&lt;/a&gt;
9823 supportstatus({&quot;servicetag&quot;: &quot;2v1xwn1&quot;, &quot;warrantyend&quot;: &quot;2013-11-24&quot;, &quot;shipped&quot;: &quot;2010-11-24&quot;, &quot;scrapestamputc&quot;: &quot;2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847&quot;, &quot;scrapedurl&quot;: &quot;http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL&quot;, &quot;vendor&quot;: &quot;Dell&quot;, &quot;productid&quot;: &quot;&quot;})
9824 %
9825 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9826
9827 &lt;p&gt;It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
9828 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
9829 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.&lt;/p&gt;
9830 </description>
9831         </item>
9832
9833         <item>
9834                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
9835                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
9836                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
9837                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9838                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
9839 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
9840 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
9841 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
9842 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
9843 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
9844
9845 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9846
9847 &lt;p&gt;My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
9848 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
9849 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
9850 by Angela).&lt;/p&gt;
9851
9852 &lt;p&gt;During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
9853 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
9854 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
9855 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
9856 becoming an osteopath.&lt;/p&gt;
9857
9858 &lt;p&gt;Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
9859 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
9860 introducing free software into schools. The project&#39;s name is
9861 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; (IT future for schools). The project links IT
9862 skills with communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;
9863
9864 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9865 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9866
9867 &lt;p&gt;While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
9868 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
9869 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
9870 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
9871 distributions that target being used for school networks.&lt;/p&gt;
9872
9873 &lt;p&gt;At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
9874 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
9875 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
9876 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
9877 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
9878 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
9879 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
9880 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
9881 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.&lt;/p&gt;
9882
9883 &lt;p&gt;In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
9884 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
9885 protection experts, other IT professionals.&lt;/p&gt;
9886
9887 &lt;p&gt;We came to two conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;
9888
9889 &lt;p&gt;First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
9890 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
9891 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
9892 whereas most of each school&#39;s requirements could mapped by a standard
9893 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
9894 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
9895 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
9896 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
9897 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
9898 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
9899 point.&lt;/p&gt;
9900
9901 &lt;p&gt;Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
9902 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
9903 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
9904 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
9905 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot;
9906 tries to provide an approach for this.&lt;/p&gt;
9907
9908 &lt;p&gt;Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
9909 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
9910 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school&#39;s IT
9911 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
9912 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
9913 spare time.&lt;/p&gt;
9914
9915 &lt;p&gt;We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
9916 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
9917 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
9918 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
9919 non-existent until 2010/2011.&lt;/p&gt;
9920
9921 &lt;p&gt;Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
9922 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
9923 avoidance do exist.&lt;/p&gt;
9924
9925 &lt;p&gt;We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
9926 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
9927 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
9928 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
9929 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
9930 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
9931 and probably a gain for all.&lt;/p&gt;
9932
9933 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9934 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9935
9936 &lt;p&gt;There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
9937 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
9938 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
9939 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
9940 project communication, honest communication within the group of
9941 developers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
9942
9943 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9944 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9945
9946 &lt;p&gt;Every coin has two sides:&lt;/p&gt;
9947
9948 &lt;p&gt;Technically: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/311188&quot;&gt;BTS issue
9949 #311188&lt;/a&gt;, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
9950 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
9951 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
9952 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
9953 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
9954 contribute).&lt;/p&gt;
9955
9956 &lt;p&gt;Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
9957 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
9958 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
9959 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
9960 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
9961 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
9962 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
9963 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
9964 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
9965 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
9966
9967 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9968
9969 &lt;p&gt;For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.&lt;/p&gt;
9970
9971 &lt;p&gt;For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
9972 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
9973 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.&lt;/p&gt;
9974
9975 &lt;p&gt;I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
9976 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
9977 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
9978 is being integrated in Ubuntu&#39;s software center.&lt;/p&gt;
9979
9980 &lt;p&gt;For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
9981 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
9982 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
9983 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
9984 whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;
9985
9986 &lt;p&gt;My favourite terminal emulator is KDE&#39;s Yakuake.&lt;/p&gt;
9987
9988 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9989 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9990
9991 &lt;p&gt;Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
9992 enrol people.&lt;/p&gt;
9993 </description>
9994         </item>
9995
9996         <item>
9997                 <title>SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</title>
9998                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</link>
9999                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</guid>
10000                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
10001                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I wrote
10002 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;how
10003 to extract support status&lt;/a&gt; for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
10004 I have learned from colleges here at the
10005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; that Dell have
10006 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
10007 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
10008 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
10009 demonstrate how to do it:&lt;/p&gt;
10010
10011 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10012 use strict;
10013 use warnings;
10014 use SOAP::Lite;
10015 use Data::Dumper;
10016 my $GUID = &#39;11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111&#39;;
10017 my $App = &#39;test&#39;;
10018 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die &quot;Please supply a servicetag. $!\n&quot;;
10019 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
10020 my $s = SOAP::Lite
10021     -&gt; uri(&#39;http://support.dell.com/WebServices/&#39;)
10022     -&gt; on_action( sub { join &#39;&#39;, @_ } )
10023     -&gt; proxy(&#39;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx&#39;)
10024     ;
10025 my $a = $s-&gt;GetAssetInformation(
10026     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;guid&#39;)-&gt;value($GUID)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
10027     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;applicationName&#39;)-&gt;value($App)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
10028     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;serviceTags&#39;)-&gt;value($servicetag)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
10029 );
10030 print Dumper($a -&gt; result) ;
10031 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10032
10033 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10034
10035 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10036 $VAR1 = {
10037           &#39;Asset&#39; =&gt; {
10038                      &#39;Entitlements&#39; =&gt; {
10039                                        &#39;EntitlementData&#39; =&gt; [
10040                                                             {
10041                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
10042                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10043                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
10044                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10045                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
10046                                                             },
10047                                                             {
10048                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
10049                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10050                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
10051                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10052                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
10053                                                             },
10054                                                             {
10055                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
10056                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2007-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10057                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
10058                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
10059                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
10060                                                             }
10061                                                           ]
10062                                      },
10063                      &#39;AssetHeaderData&#39; =&gt; {
10064                                           &#39;SystemModel&#39; =&gt; &#39;GX620&#39;,
10065                                           &#39;ServiceTag&#39; =&gt; &#39;8DSGD2J&#39;,
10066                                           &#39;SystemShipDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00&#39;,
10067                                           &#39;Buid&#39; =&gt; &#39;2323&#39;,
10068                                           &#39;Region&#39; =&gt; &#39;Europe&#39;,
10069                                           &#39;SystemID&#39; =&gt; &#39;PLX_GX620&#39;,
10070                                           &#39;SystemType&#39; =&gt; &#39;OptiPlex&#39;
10071                                         }
10072                    }
10073         };
10074 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10075
10076 &lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
10077 service outside the
10078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation&quot;&gt;inline
10079 documentation&lt;/a&gt;, and according to
10080 &lt;a href=&quot;http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/&quot;&gt;one
10081 comment&lt;/a&gt; it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
10082 scraping HTML pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10083
10084 &lt;p&gt;Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
10085 you know of one, drop me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10086 </description>
10087         </item>
10088
10089         <item>
10090                 <title>First monitor calibration using ColorHug</title>
10091                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</link>
10092                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</guid>
10093                 <pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
10094                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago my color calibration gadget
10095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;ColorHug&lt;/a&gt; arrived in the
10096 mail, and I&#39;ve had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
10097 running Debian Squeeze, where
10098 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;the
10099 calibration software&lt;/a&gt; is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
10100 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
10101 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
10102 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
10103 another day.&lt;/p&gt;
10104
10105 &lt;p&gt;After calibration, I get a
10106 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile&quot;&gt;ICC color
10107 profile&lt;/a&gt; file that can be passed to programs understanding such
10108 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
10109 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
10110 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
10111 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
10112 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
10113 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
10114 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896&quot;&gt;discovered&lt;/a&gt;
10115 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
10116 and a simple&lt;/p&gt;
10117
10118 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10119 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
10120 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10121
10122 &lt;p&gt;later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
10123 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
10124 wrong monitor type for the &quot;led&quot; monitor I got, but the result is good
10125 enough for now.&lt;/p&gt;
10126 </description>
10127         </item>
10128
10129         <item>
10130                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</title>
10131                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</link>
10132                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</guid>
10133                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 May 2012 17:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
10134                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
10135 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
10136 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
10137 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
10138 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
10139 since then, helping to make sure the
10140 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
10141 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; release became as good as it is..&lt;/p&gt;
10142
10143 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10144
10145 &lt;p&gt;I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
10146 Mathematics, and Computer Science (&quot;Informatik&quot;). During the past 12
10147 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
10148 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
10149 O- or A-level (&quot;Abitur&quot;).  For quite as long, I&#39;ve been taking care of
10150 our computer network.&lt;/p&gt;
10151
10152 &lt;p&gt;Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
10153 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
10154 (4 months).&lt;/p&gt;
10155
10156 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10157 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10158
10159 &lt;p&gt;We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
10160 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
10161 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
10162 (&quot;Best Newcomer Distribution&quot;, also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
10163 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
10164 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
10165 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
10166 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
10167 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
10168 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
10169 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
10170 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
10171 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
10172 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
10173
10174 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10175 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10176
10177 &lt;p&gt;Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
10178 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
10179 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
10180 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
10181 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
10182 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
10183 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
10184 administration costs tend towards zero.&lt;/p&gt;
10185
10186 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10187 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10188
10189 &lt;p&gt;While Debian&#39;s stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
10190 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
10191 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
10192 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
10193 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
10194 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
10195 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
10196 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
10197 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
10198 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
10199 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
10200 i.e. harder to understand for novices.&lt;/p&gt;
10201
10202 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10203
10204 &lt;p&gt;LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
10205 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
10206 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)&lt;/p&gt;
10207
10208 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10209 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10210
10211 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;
10212
10213 &lt;li&gt;Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
10214 people really &quot;own&quot; their hardware, to make them understand the
10215 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
10216 developing.&lt;/li&gt;
10217
10218 &lt;li&gt;Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany&#39;s public schools
10219 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
10220 licenses), so schools won&#39;t benefit from any savings here. This
10221 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
10222 share among German Skolelinux schools.&lt;/li&gt;
10223
10224 &lt;li&gt;Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
10225 trained. In many cases, teachers&#39; software customs are respected by
10226 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.&lt;/li&gt;
10227
10228 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
10229 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
10230 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
10231 shared world wide (school books e.g.).&lt;/li&gt;
10232
10233 &lt;li&gt;Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
10234 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don&#39;t
10235 need to know the &quot;ribbon menu&quot; in order to get employed.&lt;/li&gt;
10236
10237 &lt;li&gt;Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.&lt;/li&gt;
10238
10239 &lt;li&gt;Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
10240 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
10241 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
10242 keep sending documents in ODF formats.&lt;/li&gt;
10243
10244 &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10245 </description>
10246         </item>
10247
10248         <item>
10249                 <title>The cost of ODF and OOXML</title>
10250                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</link>
10251                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</guid>
10252                 <pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10253                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
10254 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
10255 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
10256 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
10257 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;
10258
10259 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hi.  I just noted your
10260 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
10261 comment:&lt;/p&gt;
10262
10263 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They&#39;re all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
10264 with the help of Google Translate I can&#39;t find any figures about the
10265 savings of &quot;moving to a flexible two standard&quot; as claimed by the
10266 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let&#39;s take
10267 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust.&quot;
10268 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10269
10270 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
10271 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
10272 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
10273 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
10274 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
10275 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
10276 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
10277 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
10278 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
10279 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
10280 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
10281 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
10282 of wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;
10283
10284 &lt;p&gt;Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
10285 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
10286 minutes converting to ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10287
10288 &lt;p&gt;See
10289 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&lt;/a&gt;
10290 and
10291 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&lt;/a&gt;
10292 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10293 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10294 </description>
10295         </item>
10296
10297         <item>
10298                 <title>ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</title>
10299                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</link>
10300                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</guid>
10301                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10302                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In january, I
10303 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/&quot;&gt;discovered
10304 the ColorHug&lt;/a&gt;, a USB dongle from
10305 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Hughski&lt;/a&gt; to calibrate
10306 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
10307 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;included
10308 in Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
10309 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
10310 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
10311 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
10312 should go in the mail on monday. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10313
10314 &lt;p&gt;If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
10315 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
10316 drivers. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10317 </description>
10318         </item>
10319
10320         <item>
10321                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</title>
10322                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</link>
10323                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</guid>
10324                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
10325                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
10326 publish another interview with the people behind
10327 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
10328 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
10329 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
10330 details get right before release.
10331
10332 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10333
10334 &lt;p&gt;My name is Jürgen Leibner, I&#39;m 49 years old and living in
10335 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
10336 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
10337 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I&#39;m a
10338 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
10339 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
10340 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
10341 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.&lt;/p&gt;
10342
10343 &lt;p&gt;My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
10344 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
10345 home since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
10346
10347 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10348 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10349
10350 &lt;p&gt;Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
10351 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
10352 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
10353 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
10354 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
10355 computers in use. I answered: &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
10356
10357 &lt;p&gt;Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
10358 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
10359 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
10360 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
10361 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
10362 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
10363 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
10364 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
10365 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
10366 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
10367 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
10368 people nearby who founded &#39;skolelinux.de&#39;. It was the Skolelinux
10369 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
10370 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
10371 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
10372 Bielefeld in December of 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
10373
10374 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10375 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10376
10377 &lt;p&gt;When I&#39;m looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
10378 for me as today.&lt;/p&gt;
10379
10380 &lt;p&gt;In the past there were advantages like:&lt;/p&gt;
10381
10382 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
10383
10384 &lt;li&gt;I don&#39;t need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
10385 they had little money to spent for computers and software.&lt;/li&gt;
10386
10387 &lt;li&gt;It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
10388 cost.&lt;/li&gt;
10389
10390 &lt;li&gt;It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
10391 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
10392 clients because of it&#39;s preconfigured overall concept of being a
10393 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
10394 server&lt;/li&gt;
10395
10396 &lt;li&gt;I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
10397 school.&lt;/li&gt;
10398
10399 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10400
10401 &lt;p&gt;Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
10402 came up in this way:&lt;/p&gt;
10403
10404 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
10405
10406 &lt;li&gt;Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
10407 now.&lt;/li&gt;
10408
10409 &lt;li&gt;They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
10410 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
10411 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.&lt;/li&gt;
10412
10413 &lt;li&gt;With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
10414 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
10415 interfaces used in the past.&lt;/li&gt;
10416
10417 &lt;li&gt;It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
10418 different needs.&lt;/li&gt;
10419
10420 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is usable and gets better every day.&lt;/li&gt;
10421
10422 &lt;li&gt;More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
10423 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
10424 is sharing knowledge and minds.&lt;/li&gt;
10425
10426 &lt;li&gt;Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
10427 solved today by Debian Edu. &lt;/li&gt;
10428
10429 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10430
10431 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10432 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10433
10434 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
10435
10436 &lt;li&gt;There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
10437 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
10438 whole municipality areas.&lt;/li&gt;
10439
10440 &lt;li&gt;Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
10441 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
10442 politicians.&lt;/li&gt;
10443
10444 &lt;li&gt;Technically there are no disadvantages I&#39;m aware of.&lt;/li&gt;
10445
10446 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10447
10448 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10449
10450 &lt;p&gt;I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
10451 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
10452 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
10453 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
10454 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
10455 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.&lt;/p&gt;
10456
10457 &lt;p&gt;My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
10458 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
10459 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
10460 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
10461 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.&lt;/p&gt;
10462
10463 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10464 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10465
10466 &lt;p&gt;I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
10467 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
10468 countries and areas all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;
10469 </description>
10470         </item>
10471
10472         <item>
10473                 <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
10474                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>
10475                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
10476                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
10477                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- IMG_5869.JPG --&gt;
10478 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10479
10480 &lt;p&gt;I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
10481 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
10482 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
10483 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
10484 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
10485 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
10486 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
10487 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
10488 are not marketed and sold to &quot;regular consumers&quot;.  The hair saloons
10489 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
10490 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
10491 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
10492 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
10493 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
10494 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
10495 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.&lt;/p&gt;
10496
10497 &lt;p&gt;The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
10498 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
10499 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
10500 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
10501 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
10502 finally found a Danish supplier
10503 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html&quot;&gt;selling
10504 it for around NOK 1800,-&lt;/a&gt;.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
10505 days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
10506
10507 &lt;p&gt;The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
10508 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
10509 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
10510 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
10511 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
10512 toys.&lt;/p&gt;
10513 </description>
10514         </item>
10515
10516         <item>
10517                 <title>HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</title>
10518                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
10519                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
10520                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
10521                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
10522 article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
10523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
10524 that the video editor application included with
10525 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
10526 X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
10527 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
10528
10529 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10530 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
10531 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
10532 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
10533 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10534
10535 &lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;
10536
10537 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10538 &quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
10539 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
10540 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10541
10542 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
10543 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
10544 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
10545 with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
10546 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
10547 video.  AMR is
10548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
10549 Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
10550 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
10551 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;.  MP4 is
10552 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
10553 H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
10554 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10555
10556 &lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
10557 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
10558 standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
10559 </description>
10560         </item>
10561
10562         <item>
10563                 <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
10564                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
10565                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
10566                 <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
10567                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
10568 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
10569 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
10570 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
10571 standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
10572 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
10573 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
10574 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
10575 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
10576 on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;
10577
10578 &lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
10579 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
10580 And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
10581 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
10582 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
10583 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
10584 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
10585 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
10586 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
10587 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
10588 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
10589 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
10590 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
10591 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
10592 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
10593 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
10594 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
10595 implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
10596
10597 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
10598 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
10599 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
10600 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
10601 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
10602 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
10603 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
10604 attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
10605
10606 &lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
10607 from Simon Phipps
10608 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
10609 Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
10610
10611 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
10612 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
10613 post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
10614 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
10615 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
10616 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
10617 hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
10618 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
10619 specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
10620 </description>
10621         </item>
10622
10623         <item>
10624                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
10625                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>
10626                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
10627                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
10628                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
10629 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
10630 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
10631 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
10632 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
10633 up in the recently released
10634 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
10635 Edu Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
10636
10637 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10638
10639 &lt;p&gt;My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
10640 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
10641 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
10642 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
10643 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
10644 information technology and science/technology.&lt;/p&gt;
10645
10646 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10647 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10648
10649 &lt;p&gt;Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
10650 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
10651 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
10652 contributing.&lt;/p&gt;
10653
10654 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10655 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10656
10657 &lt;p&gt;The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
10658 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
10659 Debian Project!&lt;/p&gt;
10660
10661 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10662 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10663
10664 &lt;p&gt;As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
10665 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
10666 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
10667 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
10668 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
10669 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
10670 rather small and often busy elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
10671
10672 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN&quot;&gt;Debian LAN&lt;/a&gt;
10673 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.&lt;/p&gt;
10674
10675 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10676
10677 &lt;p&gt;I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
10678 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
10679 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
10680 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.&lt;/p&gt;
10681
10682 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10683 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10684
10685 &lt;p&gt;One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
10686 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
10687 politicians, this works out great for the &quot;market-leader&quot;.  The school
10688 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
10689 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
10690 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
10691 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.&lt;/p&gt;
10692
10693 &lt;p&gt;To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
10694 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
10695 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to &#39;free&#39;
10696 the system.  There is currently some discussion about &quot;Open Data&quot; and
10697 &quot;Free/Open Standards&quot;.  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
10698 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
10699 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
10700 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.&lt;/p&gt;
10701 </description>
10702         </item>
10703
10704         <item>
10705                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
10706                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>
10707                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
10708                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
10709                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
10710 like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
10711 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
10712 contributor to the
10713 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
10714 Edu Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;.
10715
10716 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10717
10718 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
10719 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.&lt;/p&gt;
10720
10721 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10722 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10723
10724 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
10725 reason my name&#39;s in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
10726 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
10727 they&#39;d like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
10728 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
10729 &quot;localisation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
10730
10731 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10732 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10733
10734 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10735 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10736
10737 &lt;p&gt;These questions are too hard for me - I don&#39;t use it!  In fact I
10738 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I&#39;d got out of the
10739 education system.&lt;/p&gt;
10740
10741 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
10742 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
10743 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
10744 money on the latest hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
10745
10746 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10747
10748 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
10749 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
10750 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).&lt;/p&gt;
10751
10752 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10753 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10754
10755 &lt;p&gt;Well, I don&#39;t know.  I suppose I&#39;d be inclined to try reasoning
10756 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
10757 you would hardly need a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
10758 </description>
10759         </item>
10760
10761         <item>
10762                 <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
10763                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>
10764                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
10765                 <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
10766                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent time with
10767 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt; on speeding
10768 up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
10769 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
10770 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
10771 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
10772 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
10773 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
10774 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
10775
10776 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
10777 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
10778 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
10779 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
10780 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
10781 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
10782 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
10783 around 230 access(2) calls.&lt;/p&gt;
10784
10785 &lt;p&gt;The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
10786 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
10787 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
10788 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
10789 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
10790 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
10791 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416&quot;&gt;KDE bug report
10792 from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about this problem, and it is still unsolved.&lt;/p&gt;
10793
10794 &lt;p&gt;My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
10795 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
10796 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
10797 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
10798 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
10799 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
10800 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
10801 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
10802 almost instantaneous.  I&#39;m not quite sure where to make the package
10803 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.&lt;/p&gt;
10804
10805 &lt;p&gt;The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
10806 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
10807 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
10808 that is not really an option at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
10809
10810 &lt;p&gt;If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
10811 (at) lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10812 </description>
10813         </item>
10814
10815         <item>
10816                 <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
10817                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>
10818                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
10819                 <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10820                 <description>&lt;p&gt;About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
10821 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; by
10822 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
10823 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
10824 for schools.  Check out his article
10825 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
10826 distribution for education&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
10827 </description>
10828         </item>
10829
10830         <item>
10831                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
10832                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
10833                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
10834                 <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10835                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Germany is a core area for the
10836 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
10837 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
10838 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
10839
10840 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10841
10842 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve studied Mathematics at the university &#39;Ruhr-Universität&#39; in
10843 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I&#39;m working as a teacher at the school
10844 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/&quot;&gt;Westfalen-Kolleg
10845 Dortmund&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
10846 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
10847 examination &#39;Abitur&#39;, which will allow to study at a university. This
10848 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
10849 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.&lt;/p&gt;
10850
10851 &lt;p&gt;Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
10852 blended learning project called &#39;abitur-online.nrw&#39; and in some other
10853 information technology related projects. For about ten years I&#39;ve been
10854 teacher and coordinator for the &#39;abitur-online&#39; project at my
10855 school. Being now in my early sixties, I&#39;ve decided to leave school at
10856 the end of April this year.&lt;/p&gt;
10857
10858 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10859 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10860
10861 &lt;p&gt;The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
10862 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
10863 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
10864 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
10865 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
10866 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
10867 reach. At home I&#39;m using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
10868 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
10869 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
10870 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
10871 Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
10872
10873 &lt;p&gt;Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
10874 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
10875 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
10876 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
10877 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
10878 the admin teachers.&lt;/p&gt;
10879
10880 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10881 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10882
10883 &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it&#39;s
10884 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
10885 So it was a perfect choice.&lt;/p&gt;
10886
10887 &lt;p&gt;Being open source, there are no license problems and so it&#39;s
10888 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
10889 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It&#39;s of
10890 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
10891 a school and to choose where to get support for this.&lt;/p&gt;
10892
10893 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10894 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10895
10896 &lt;p&gt;Nothing yet.&lt;/p&gt;
10897
10898 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10899
10900 &lt;p&gt;At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
10901 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
10902 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
10903 LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;
10904
10905 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10906 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10907
10908 &lt;p&gt;Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
10909 that doesn&#39;t seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
10910 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.&lt;/p&gt;
10911 </description>
10912         </item>
10913
10914         <item>
10915                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</title>
10916                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</link>
10917                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</guid>
10918                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10919                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
10920
10921 &lt;p&gt;The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
10922 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
10923 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
10924 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
10925 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
10926 and also available from &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/38601767&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt;
10927 and download as a
10928 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
10929 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
10930
10931 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;kmail-kerberos-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
10932   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
10933     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
10934       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10935 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10936 </description>
10937         </item>
10938
10939         <item>
10940                 <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
10941                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
10942                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
10943                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
10944                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
10945 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
10946 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
10947 Squeeze release&lt;/a&gt; was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
10948 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;
10949
10950 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10951
10952 &lt;p&gt;I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
10953 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
10954 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
10955 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
10956 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
10957 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
10958 weren&#39;t able to convert many of them into sustainable
10959 installations.&lt;/p&gt;
10960
10961 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10962 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10963
10964 &lt;p&gt;Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
10965 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
10966 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
10967 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
10968 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
10969 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
10970 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
10971 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
10972 these things we decided to try it.&lt;/p&gt;
10973
10974 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10975 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10976
10977 &lt;p&gt;By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
10978 from that I have always believed in the same &quot;sustainable computing&quot;
10979 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
10980 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
10981 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
10982 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
10983 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
10984 proprietary software everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;
10985
10986 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10987 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10988
10989 &lt;p&gt;As a newcomer I&#39;m just finding out who&#39;s who in the community and
10990 how you&#39;re organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
10991 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
10992 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
10993 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!&lt;/p&gt;
10994
10995 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10996
10997 &lt;p&gt;Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
10998 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
10999 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
11000 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I&#39;m not sure if
11001 that counts...)&lt;/p&gt;
11002
11003 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11004 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11005
11006 &lt;p&gt;That&#39;s a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
11007 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
11008 the notion of &quot;computer&quot; means simply &quot;proprietary office
11009 applications&quot;.  However, schools today are experiencing budget
11010 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
11011 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
11012 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
11013 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
11014 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they&#39;re
11015 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it&#39;s encouraging that the
11016 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;
11017
11018 &lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
11019 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
11020 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.&lt;/p&gt;
11021 </description>
11022         </item>
11023
11024         <item>
11025                 <title>Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</title>
11026                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11027                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11028                 <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
11029                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
11030 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
11031 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
11032 believe is a very efficient work flow.&lt;/p&gt;
11033
11034 &lt;ol&gt;
11035
11036 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is written in a
11037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in&quot;&gt;moinmoin wiki&lt;/a&gt; (see for example
11038 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;the
11039 Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;) with support for exporting the content as
11040 docbook XML.&lt;/li&gt;
11041
11042 &lt;li&gt;This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
11043 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
11044 with the translated text.&lt;/li&gt;
11045
11046 &lt;li&gt;The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
11047 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
11048 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
11049 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
11050 images.&lt;/li&gt;
11051
11052 &lt;li&gt;The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
11053 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.&lt;/li&gt;
11054
11055 &lt;li&gt;The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
11056 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.&lt;/li&gt;
11057
11058 &lt;/ol&gt;
11059
11060 &lt;p&gt;This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
11061 issue is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/DocBook&quot;&gt;the docbook support
11062 we use in moinmoin&lt;/a&gt; is not actively maintained.  The docbook
11063 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
11064 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.&lt;/p&gt;
11065
11066 &lt;p&gt;If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
11067 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;debian-edu-doc
11068 package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11069 </description>
11070         </item>
11071
11072         <item>
11073                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</title>
11074                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</link>
11075                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</guid>
11076                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
11077                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
11078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; based
11079 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11080 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11081 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
11082 you have not done so already.&lt;/p&gt;
11083
11084 &lt;p&gt;I plan to present the new version at
11085 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/&quot;&gt;a NUUG
11086 meeting&lt;/a&gt; on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
11087 in Oslo, Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
11088 </description>
11089         </item>
11090
11091         <item>
11092                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</title>
11093                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</link>
11094                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</guid>
11095                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
11096                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/&quot;&gt;the
11097 interview series&lt;/a&gt; conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
11098 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11099 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
11100 more international audience.&lt;/p&gt;
11101
11102 &lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
11103 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
11104 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
11105 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
11106 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
11107 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
11108 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
11109
11110
11111 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11112
11113 &lt;p&gt;My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
11114 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
11115 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
11116 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
11117 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
11118 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
11119 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
11120 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
11121 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
11122 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
11123 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
11124
11125 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11126 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11127
11128 &lt;p&gt;In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
11129 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
11130 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
11131 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn&#39;t really improve my setup. I
11132 did various desperate searches for things like &quot;school Linux server&quot;
11133 and ended up in a document called &quot;Drift&quot; something or other. Reading
11134 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
11135 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
11136 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
11137 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
11138 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
11139 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
11140 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.&lt;/p&gt;
11141
11142 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11143 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11144
11145 &lt;p&gt;For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
11146 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
11147 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
11148 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
11149 doesn&#39;t necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
11150 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
11151 Japan.&lt;/p&gt;
11152
11153 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11154 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11155
11156 &lt;p&gt;The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
11157 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
11158 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
11159 who don&#39;t need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
11160 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
11161 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
11162 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
11163 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
11164 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
11165 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
11166 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
11167 multiplies. For example, backup wasn&#39;t working properly in Lenny. It
11168 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
11169 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
11170 help.&lt;/p&gt;
11171
11172 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11173
11174 &lt;p&gt;Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
11175 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
11176 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
11177 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
11178 house, that&#39;s very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
11179 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
11180 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
11181 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
11182 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
11183 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
11184 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.&lt;/p&gt;
11185
11186 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11187 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11188
11189 &lt;p&gt;Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
11190 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
11191 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
11192 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
11193 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
11194 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
11195 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
11196 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
11197 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
11198 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
11199 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn&#39;t work, or their browser
11200 doesn&#39;t play flash, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
11201 </description>
11202         </item>
11203
11204         <item>
11205                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</title>
11206                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</link>
11207                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</guid>
11208                 <pubDate>Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
11209                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
11210
11211 &lt;p&gt;One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
11212 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
11213 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
11214 also available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/37675399&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt; and
11215 download as a
11216 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
11217 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
11218
11219 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;gosa-mass-user-create-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
11220   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
11221     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
11222       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11223 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11224 </description>
11225         </item>
11226
11227         <item>
11228                 <title>Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
11229                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
11230                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
11231                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Mar 2012 18:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
11232                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
11233 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
11234 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11235 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11236 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
11237 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
11238 </description>
11239         </item>
11240
11241         <item>
11242                 <title>Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</title>
11243                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</link>
11244                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</guid>
11245                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Mar 2012 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
11246                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
11247 / Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; initiated a student project to create a tool
11248 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
11249 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called &quot;stopmotion&quot;,
11250 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
11251 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
11252 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
11253 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
11254 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
11255 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
11256 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
11257 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
11258 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
11259 year...&lt;/p&gt;
11260
11261 &lt;p&gt;Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
11262 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
11263 name,
11264 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/&quot;&gt;linuxstopmotion&lt;/a&gt;.
11265 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
11266 Internet search engines (try to search for &#39;stopmotion&#39; to see what I
11267 mean). I&#39;ve been following
11268 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community&quot;&gt;the
11269 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and the improvement already in place and planned for
11270 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
11271 Check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11272 </description>
11273         </item>
11274
11275         <item>
11276                 <title>Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
11277                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
11278                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
11279                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
11280                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
11281 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
11282 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
11283 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
11284 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11285 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
11286 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
11287 </description>
11288         </item>
11289
11290         <item>
11291                 <title>First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
11292                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
11293                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
11294                 <pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
11295                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
11296 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
11297 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
11298 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
11299 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11300 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
11301 solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
11302 </description>
11303         </item>
11304
11305         <item>
11306                 <title>How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</title>
11307                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</link>
11308                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</guid>
11309                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
11310                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
11311 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
11312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532&quot;&gt;I was
11313 close&lt;/a&gt; this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
11314 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
11315 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
11316 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
11317 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
11318 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.&lt;/p&gt;
11319
11320 &lt;p&gt;After fumbling a bit, I
11321 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/&quot;&gt;found
11322 that hdparm -I&lt;/a&gt; will report the disk serial number, which is
11323 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
11324 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:&lt;/p&gt;
11325
11326 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11327 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep &#39;(F)&#39;|tr &#39; &#39; &quot;\n&quot;|grep &#39;(F)&#39;|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
11328 do
11329     printf &quot;Failed disk $d: &quot;
11330     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep &#39;Serial Num&#39;
11331 done
11332 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
11333
11334 &lt;p&gt;Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
11335 next time, and in case other find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;
11336
11337 &lt;p&gt;At the moment I have two failing disk. :(&lt;/p&gt;
11338
11339 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11340 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11341 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
11342 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
11343 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
11344
11345 &lt;p&gt;The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
11346 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
11347 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
11348 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
11349 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
11350 mounted inside my box.&lt;/p&gt;
11351
11352 &lt;p&gt;I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
11353 Software RAID in the
11354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html&quot;&gt;nagios-plugins-standard&lt;/a&gt;
11355 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
11356 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
11357 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
11358 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
11359 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.&lt;/p&gt;
11360 </description>
11361         </item>
11362
11363         <item>
11364                 <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
11365                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
11366                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
11367                 <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
11368                 <description>&lt;p&gt;New in the Squeeze version of
11369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is the
11370 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
11371 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
11372 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from &lt;tt&gt;http://wpad/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt;, to
11373 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
11374 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
11375 change the global proxy setting by editing
11376 &lt;tt&gt;tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt; and the change propagate
11377 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.&lt;/p&gt;
11378
11379 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
11380 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
11381 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):&lt;/p&gt;
11382
11383 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11384 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
11385 {
11386    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
11387        isPlainHostName(host) ||
11388        dnsDomainIs(host, &quot;.intern&quot;))
11389       return &quot;DIRECT&quot;;
11390    else
11391       return &quot;PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT&quot;;
11392 }
11393 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11394
11395 &lt;p&gt;to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:&lt;/p&gt;
11396
11397 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11398 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11399 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
11400 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11401
11402 &lt;p&gt;To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
11403 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
11404 would be used for
11405 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;,
11406 and insert this extracted proxy URL in &lt;tt&gt;/etc/environment&lt;/tt&gt; and
11407 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/apt.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
11408 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
11409 javascript code is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/631045&quot;&gt;no longer
11410 able to build&lt;/a&gt; because the C library it depended on is now a C++
11411 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
11412 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
11413 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
11414 known alternative is known at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
11415
11416 &lt;p&gt;This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
11417 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
11418 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
11419 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
11420 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
11421 announced, direct connections will be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;
11422
11423 &lt;p&gt;Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
11424 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
11425 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
11426 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
11427 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
11428 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
11429 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
11430 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
11431 the network setup changes.&lt;/p&gt;
11432
11433 &lt;p&gt;The WPAD system is documented in a
11434 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01&quot;&gt;IETF
11435 draft&lt;/a&gt; and a
11436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia
11437 page&lt;/a&gt; for those that want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
11438 </description>
11439         </item>
11440
11441         <item>
11442                 <title>Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</title>
11443                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</link>
11444                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</guid>
11445                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
11446                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since the Lenny version of
11447 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, a
11448 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
11449 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
11450 in the morning.  This is done using the
11451 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html&quot;&gt;shutdown-at-night&lt;/a&gt; Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
11452
11453 &lt;p&gt;To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
11454 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
11455 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
11456 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
11457 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
11458 the
11459 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html&quot;&gt;nvram-wakeup&lt;/a&gt;
11460 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
11461 10 minutes.  If this isn&#39;t working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
11462 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
11463 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
11464
11465 &lt;p&gt;It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
11466 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
11467 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
11468 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I&#39;ve seen old
11469 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
11470 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
11471 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.&lt;/p&gt;
11472
11473 &lt;p&gt;The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
11474 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
11475 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
11476 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night&lt;/tt&gt; to enable it.
11477 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?&lt;/p&gt;
11478 </description>
11479         </item>
11480
11481         <item>
11482                 <title>Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
11483                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
11484                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
11485                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Feb 2012 13:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
11486                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
11487 publish the third beta version of
11488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
11489 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
11490 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
11491 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
11492 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11493 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11494 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
11495
11496 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
11497 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):&lt;/p&gt;
11498
11499 &lt;ul&gt;
11500
11501 &lt;li&gt;It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
11502   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
11503   the installation.&lt;/li&gt;
11504
11505 &lt;li&gt;Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
11506   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.&lt;/li&gt;
11507
11508 &lt;li&gt;The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
11509   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
11510   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.&lt;/li&gt;
11511
11512 &lt;li&gt;The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
11513   for the local system administrator is created during installation
11514   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
11515   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
11516   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
11517   up to date on the system.&lt;/li&gt;
11518
11519 &lt;/ul&gt;
11520
11521 &lt;p&gt;The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
11522 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
11523 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
11524 final Squeeze release is published.&lt;/p&gt;
11525
11526 &lt;p&gt;Next weekend the project organise a
11527 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;developer
11528 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
11529 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
11530 will see you there?&lt;/p&gt;
11531 </description>
11532         </item>
11533
11534         <item>
11535                 <title>Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
11536                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
11537                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
11538                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
11539                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
11540 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
11541 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
11542 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
11543 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
11544 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
11545 work, but there are other use cases as well.&lt;/p&gt;
11546
11547 &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
11548 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
11549 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
11550 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
11551 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
11552 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
11553 not taken care of by this.&lt;/p&gt;
11554
11555 &lt;p&gt;For non-network devices, we provide the script
11556 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; which
11557 search through the &lt;tt&gt;dmesg&lt;/tt&gt; output for drivers requesting extra
11558 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
11559 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
11560 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
11561 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
11562 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;#655507&lt;/a&gt;), to allow PXE
11563 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
11564 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
11565 firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
11566
11567 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
11568 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
11569 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
11570 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
11571 initrd with extra firmware, the
11572 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; script is
11573 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
11574 PXE initrd with firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
11575
11576 &lt;p&gt;Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
11577 network cards working.  For this,
11578 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; is
11579 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
11580 the same way as the other firmware related tools.&lt;/p&gt;
11581
11582 &lt;p&gt;At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
11583 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
11584 non-free software, and it is their choice.&lt;/p&gt;
11585
11586 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
11587 try.&lt;/p&gt;
11588 </description>
11589         </item>
11590
11591         <item>
11592                 <title>Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
11593                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
11594                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
11595                 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
11596                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The next version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
11597 / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; will include a new tool
11598 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp&lt;/tt&gt;, which can be used to quickly set up all
11599 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
11600 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.&lt;/p&gt;
11601
11602 &lt;p&gt;First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
11603 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
11604 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
11605 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
11606 this is done, log on to the central server and run
11607 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a&lt;/tt&gt; in the &lt;tt&gt;konsole&lt;/tt&gt; to use the
11608 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
11609 will look similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;
11610
11611 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11612 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
11613 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
11614 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.
11615
11616 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
11617
11618 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11619 enter password: *******
11620 %
11621 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11622
11623 &lt;p&gt;After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
11624 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
11625 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
11626 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
11627 then to log into &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa&lt;/a&gt;,
11628 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
11629 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
11630 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
11631 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
11632 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
11633 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
11634 automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
11635
11636 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
11637 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;
11638
11639 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
11640 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
11641 original text, and have added it to the text now.&lt;/p&gt;
11642 </description>
11643         </item>
11644
11645         <item>
11646                 <title>Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
11647                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
11648                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
11649                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
11650                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Squeeze version of
11651 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; soon
11652 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
11653 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
11654 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
11655 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
11656 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
11657 first time.&lt;/p&gt;
11658
11659 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
11660 labeledURI with &quot;http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux&quot; as the
11661 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
11662 to see the page behind this new URL.&lt;/p&gt;
11663
11664 &lt;p&gt;An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
11665 called as &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ldapvi -ZD &#39;(cn=admin)&#39;&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to update LDAP with the
11666 new setting.&lt;/p&gt;
11667
11668 &lt;p&gt;We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
11669 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
11670 from within Iceweasel instead.&lt;/p&gt;
11671 </description>
11672         </item>
11673
11674         <item>
11675                 <title>Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
11676                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
11677                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
11678                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
11679                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
11680 the second beta version of
11681 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  If
11682 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
11683 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
11684 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
11685 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
11686 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
11687 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
11688 </description>
11689         </item>
11690
11691         <item>
11692                 <title>Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</title>
11693                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11694                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11695                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
11696                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
11697 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ready
11698 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
11699 interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
11700
11701 &lt;P&gt;The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
11702 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
11703 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
11704 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
11705 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
11706 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
11707 wrap up its tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
11708
11709 &lt;p&gt;Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
11710 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
11711 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
11712 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
11713 because I was typing.&lt;/P&gt;
11714
11715 &lt;p&gt;The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
11716 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
11717 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
11718 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do &#39;find /&#39; to
11719 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
11720 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
11721 generate entropy.&lt;/p&gt;
11722
11723 &lt;p&gt;The fix is in
11724 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation&quot;&gt;beta1
11725 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version, and we
11726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu&quot;&gt;welcome more testers and
11727 developers&lt;/a&gt;.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
11728 </description>
11729         </item>
11730
11731         <item>
11732                 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
11733                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
11734                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
11735                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
11736                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
11737 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
11738 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
11739 up to date.  If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
11740 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
11741 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
11742 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
11743 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
11744 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
11745 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
11746
11747 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
11748 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
11749 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
11750 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
11751
11752 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
11753 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
11754 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
11755 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
11756 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
11757 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
11758 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
11759 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
11760
11761 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
11762 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
11763 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
11764
11765 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11766 #!/usr/bin/perl
11767 use strict;
11768 use warnings;
11769 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
11770 BEGIN {
11771     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
11772     my %rhelmodules = (
11773         &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
11774         );
11775     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
11776         eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
11777         if ($@) {
11778             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
11779             system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
11780             eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
11781         }
11782     }
11783 }
11784 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
11785
11786 upgrade_dell();
11787
11788 exit 0;
11789
11790 sub run_firmware_script {
11791     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
11792     unless ($script) {
11793         print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
11794         exit 1
11795     }
11796     print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
11797
11798     if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
11799         print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
11800     } else {
11801         print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
11802     }
11803 }
11804
11805 sub run_firmware_scripts {
11806     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
11807     # Run firmware packages
11808     for my $dir (@dirs) {
11809         print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
11810         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
11811         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
11812             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
11813             run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
11814         }
11815         closedir $dh;
11816     }
11817 }
11818
11819 sub download {
11820     my $url = shift;
11821     print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
11822     system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
11823 }
11824
11825 sub upgrade_dell {
11826     my @dirs;
11827     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11828     chomp $product;
11829
11830     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
11831
11832         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
11833         system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
11834
11835         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
11836             CLEANUP =&gt; 1
11837             );
11838         chdir($tmpdir);
11839         fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
11840         system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
11841         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
11842         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
11843         my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
11844         if (@paths) {
11845             for my $url (@paths) {
11846                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
11847             }
11848             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
11849         } else {
11850             print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
11851             print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
11852         }
11853         chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
11854     } else {
11855         print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
11856         print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
11857     }
11858 }
11859
11860 sub fetch_dell_fw {
11861     my $path = shift;
11862     my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
11863     download($url);
11864 }
11865
11866 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
11867 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
11868 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
11869 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
11870     my $filename = shift;
11871
11872     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
11873     chomp $product;
11874     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
11875
11876     print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
11877
11878     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
11879     my @paths;
11880     for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
11881         my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
11882         my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
11883         my $oscode;
11884         if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
11885             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
11886         } else {
11887             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
11888         }
11889         if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
11890         {
11891             @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
11892         }
11893     }
11894     for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
11895         my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
11896
11897         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
11898         next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
11899
11900         my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
11901         for my $path (@paths) {
11902             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
11903                 push(@paths, $cpath);
11904             }
11905         }
11906     }
11907     return @paths;
11908 }
11909 &lt;/pre&gt;
11910
11911 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
11912 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
11913 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
11914 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
11915 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
11916 </description>
11917         </item>
11918
11919         <item>
11920                 <title>Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</title>
11921                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</link>
11922                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</guid>
11923                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2011 19:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11924                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
11925 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
11926 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
11927 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
11928 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
11929 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
11930 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
11931 models.&lt;/p&gt;
11932
11933 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, while reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://boklaben.no/?p=220&quot;&gt;part of
11934 this debate&lt;/a&gt;, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
11935 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
11936 to a better model.  The idea is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
11937
11938 &lt;p&gt;Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
11939 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
11940 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
11941 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about
11942 36,000 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt;
11943 (1149 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The
11944 Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
11945 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
11946 distributed.&lt;/p&gt;
11947
11948 &lt;p&gt;The computer system would make it easy to:&lt;/p&gt;
11949
11950 &lt;ul&gt;
11951
11952 &lt;li&gt;Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
11953   other relevant equipment.&lt;/li&gt;
11954
11955 &lt;li&gt;Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.&lt;/li&gt;
11956
11957 &lt;/ul&gt;
11958
11959 &lt;p&gt;In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
11960 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
11961 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
11962 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
11963 books available.&lt;/p&gt;
11964
11965 &lt;p&gt;Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
11966 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
11967 libraries. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11968 </description>
11969         </item>
11970
11971         <item>
11972                 <title>Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</title>
11973                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</link>
11974                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</guid>
11975                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11976                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
11977 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
11978 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
11979 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
11980 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
11981 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
11982 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
11983 perfectly legal here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
11984
11985 &lt;p&gt;Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:&lt;/p&gt;
11986
11987 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11988 #!/bin/sh
11989 # apt-get install lsdvd
11990 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
11991 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
11992 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11993
11994 &lt;p&gt;But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
11995 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
11996 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
11997 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.&lt;/p&gt;
11998
11999 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
12000 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
12001 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
12002 back as an ISO.
12003
12004 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12005 #!/bin/sh
12006 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
12007 set -e
12008 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
12009 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
12010 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
12011 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
12012 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
12013 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12014
12015 &lt;p&gt;Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?&lt;/p&gt;
12016
12017 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
12018 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
12019 read optical media, and is called like this: &lt;tt&gt;readom dev=/dev/dvd
12020 f=image.iso&lt;/tt&gt;.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
12021 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
12022
12023 &lt;p&gt;Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
12024 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo&quot;&gt;his
12025 program python-dvdvideo&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be just what I am looking
12026 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
12027 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
12028 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
12029 </description>
12030         </item>
12031
12032         <item>
12033                 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
12034                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
12035                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
12036                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
12037                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
12038 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
12039 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
12040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
12041 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
12042 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
12043 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  I only have time to address one
12044 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
12045 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
12046
12047 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
12048 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
12049 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
12050 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
12051 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
12052
12053 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
12054 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
12055 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
12056 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
12057 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
12058 mode.  I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
12059 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
12060
12061 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
12062 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  This means the only thing that is
12063 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
12064 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
12065 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
12066 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
12067 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
12068 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
12069 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
12070 1.  It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
12071 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
12072 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
12073
12074 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
12075 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
12076 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  When booting into
12077 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
12078 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  A problem show up when
12079 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
12080 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
12081 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
12082 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
12083
12084 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
12085 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
12086 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
12087 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
12088 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
12089 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
12090 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
12091 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
12092
12093 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
12094 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
12095 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
12096 </description>
12097         </item>
12098
12099         <item>
12100                 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
12101                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
12102                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
12103                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12104                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
12105 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
12106 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
12107 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
12108 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
12109 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
12110 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
12111 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
12112 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
12113 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
12114 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
12115 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
12116 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
12117
12118 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
12119 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
12120 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
12121 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
12122 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
12123 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
12124 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
12125 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
12126 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
12127
12128 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
12129 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
12130 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
12131 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
12132
12133 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
12134 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
12135 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
12136 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
12137 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
12138 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
12139 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
12140 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
12141 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
12142 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
12143 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
12144 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
12145 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
12146 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
12147 </description>
12148         </item>
12149
12150         <item>
12151                 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
12152                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
12153                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
12154                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
12155                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
12156 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
12157 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
12158 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
12159 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
12160
12161 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
12162 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
12163 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
12164
12165 &lt;ol&gt;
12166
12167 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
12168 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
12169 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
12170 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
12171 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
12172 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
12173 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
12174 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
12175
12176 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
12177 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
12178 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
12179 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
12180 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
12181 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
12182 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
12183 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
12184 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
12185 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
12186 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
12187 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
12188 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
12189
12190 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
12191 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
12192 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
12193 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
12194 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
12195 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
12196 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
12197 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
12198 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
12199 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
12200
12201 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
12202 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
12203 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
12204 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
12205 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
12206 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
12207
12208 &lt;/ol&gt;
12209
12210 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
12211 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
12212 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
12213
12214 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
12215 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
12216 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
12217 </description>
12218         </item>
12219
12220         <item>
12221                 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
12222                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
12223                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
12224                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
12225                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
12226 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
12227 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
12228 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
12229 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
12230
12231 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
12232 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
12233 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
12234 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
12235 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
12236 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
12237 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
12238 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
12239 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
12240 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
12241 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
12242 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
12243
12244 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
12245 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
12246 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
12247 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
12248 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
12249 </description>
12250         </item>
12251
12252         <item>
12253                 <title>Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</title>
12254                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</link>
12255                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</guid>
12256                 <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12257                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Reading
12258 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/&quot;&gt;the
12259 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;, I came across two highlights of interesting
12260 parts of the
12261 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA&quot;&gt;Autodesk&lt;/a&gt;
12262 and
12263 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html&quot;&gt;Microsoft
12264 Kinect&lt;/a&gt; End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
12265 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
12266 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;
12267 </description>
12268         </item>
12269
12270         <item>
12271                 <title>Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</title>
12272                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</link>
12273                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</guid>
12274                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
12275                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the first draft implementation of an
12276 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; for the Norwegian
12277 service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; started to
12278 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
12279 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
12280 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
12281 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
12282 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
12283 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
12284 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.&lt;/p&gt;
12285
12286 &lt;p&gt;Where is it?  Visit
12287 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&quot;&gt;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&lt;/a&gt;
12288 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
12289 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
12290 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;
12291 </description>
12292         </item>
12293
12294         <item>
12295                 <title>Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</title>
12296                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</link>
12297                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</guid>
12298                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12299                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
12300 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; in the
12301 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian FixMyStreet service&lt;/a&gt;.
12302 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
12303 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
12304 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixmystreet.org.nz/&quot;&gt;New Zealand version&lt;/a&gt; of
12305 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
12306 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
12307 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
12308 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
12309 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
12310 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
12311 issues with the Open311 specification.&lt;/p&gt;
12312
12313 &lt;p&gt;One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
12314 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
12315 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
12316 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
12317 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
12318 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
12319 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
12320 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
12321 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
12322 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
12323 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
12324 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
12325 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
12326
12327 &lt;p&gt;A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
12328 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
12329 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
12330 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
12331 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
12332 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
12333 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
12334 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
12335 it.&lt;/p&gt;
12336
12337 &lt;p&gt;The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
12338 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
12339 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I&#39;m not
12340 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
12341 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
12342 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
12343 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.&lt;/p&gt;
12344
12345 &lt;p&gt;The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
12346 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
12347 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
12348 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
12349 and range= options.&lt;/p&gt;
12350
12351 &lt;p&gt;The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
12352 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
12353 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
12354 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
12355 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
12356 to best handle this.  I&#39;ve noticed
12357 &lt;a href=&quot;http://seeclickfix.com/open311/&quot;&gt;SeeClickFix&lt;/a&gt; added
12358 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
12359 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
12360 Will have to investigate this a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;
12361
12362 &lt;p&gt;My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
12363 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
12364 list available via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmane.org/&quot;&gt;Gmane&lt;/a&gt; to use for
12365 discussions instead of only
12366 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;a/&gt;.  Oh,
12367 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I&#39;ve
12368 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
12369 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
12370 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
12371 work like the free software project communities I am used to.&lt;/p&gt;
12372 </description>
12373         </item>
12374
12375         <item>
12376                 <title>Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</title>
12377                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</link>
12378                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</guid>
12379                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12380                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is still
12381 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
12382 A few days ago the project
12383 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt;
12384 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
12385 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
12386 into Gnash.&lt;/p&gt;
12387 </description>
12388         </item>
12389
12390         <item>
12391                 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
12392                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
12393                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
12394                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12395                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
12396 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
12397 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
12398
12399 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
12400 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
12401 of the British service
12402 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
12403 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
12404 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
12405 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
12406 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
12407 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
12408 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
12409 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
12410 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
12411 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
12412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
12413 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
12414 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
12415
12416 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
12417 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
12418 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
12419 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
12420 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
12421 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
12422
12423 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
12424 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
12425 </description>
12426         </item>
12427
12428         <item>
12429                 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
12430                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
12431                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
12432                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
12433                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
12434 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
12435 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
12436 available on the Internet, and check our locally
12437 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
12438 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
12439 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
12440 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
12441 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
12442 out which security holes were present in our free software
12443 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
12444
12445 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
12446 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
12447 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
12448 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
12449 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
12450 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
12451 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
12452 solution.  Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
12453 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
12454 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
12455 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
12456 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
12457 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
12458 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
12459 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
12460 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
12461
12462 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
12463 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
12464 check out, one could look up
12465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
12466 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
12467 The most recent one is
12468 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
12469 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
12470 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
12471
12472 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
12473 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
12474 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
12475 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
12476 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
12477 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
12478
12479 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
12480 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
12481 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
12482 RHEL is providing
12483 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
12484 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
12485 information.  I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
12486
12487 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
12488 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
12489 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
12490 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
12491 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
12492 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
12493 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
12494 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
12495 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
12496 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
12497
12498 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
12499 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
12500 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
12501 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
12502 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
12503 </description>
12504         </item>
12505
12506         <item>
12507                 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
12508                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
12509                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
12510                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
12511                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
12512 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
12513 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
12514 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
12515 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
12516 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
12517 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
12518 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
12519 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
12520 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;.  The relevant output on
12521 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12522
12523 &lt;pre&gt;
12524 loaded modules:
12525 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
12526 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
12527 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
12528 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
12529 10de:03ec pata_amd
12530 10de:03f6 sata_nv
12531 1022:1103 k8temp
12532 109e:036e bttv
12533 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
12534 11ab:4364 sky2
12535 &lt;/pre&gt;
12536
12537 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
12538 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
12539
12540 &lt;pre&gt;
12541 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
12542     echo loaded pci modules:
12543     (
12544         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
12545         for address in * ; do
12546             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
12547                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12548                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
12549                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12550                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
12551                     echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
12552                 fi
12553             fi
12554         done
12555     )
12556     echo
12557 fi
12558 &lt;/pre&gt;
12559
12560 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
12561 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
12562
12563 &lt;pre&gt;
12564 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
12565     echo loaded usb modules:
12566     (
12567         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
12568         for address in * ; do
12569             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
12570                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
12571                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
12572                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
12573                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
12574                     if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
12575                         echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
12576                     fi
12577                 fi
12578             fi
12579         done
12580     )
12581     echo
12582 fi
12583 &lt;/pre&gt;
12584
12585 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
12586 well.&lt;/p&gt;
12587 </description>
12588         </item>
12589
12590         <item>
12591                 <title>The video format most supported in web browsers?</title>
12592                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</link>
12593                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</guid>
12594                 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
12595                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
12596 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
12597 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
12598 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
12599 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
12600 the Wikipedia article on
12601 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;HTML5 video&lt;/a&gt;,
12602 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
12603 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
12604 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
12605 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
12606 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
12607 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
12608 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
12609 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
12610 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
12611 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
12612 Safari can install plugins to get it.&lt;/p&gt;
12613
12614 &lt;p&gt;To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
12615 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
12616 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
12617 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
12618 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, we provide first fallback to a
12619 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
12620 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
12621 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an &lt;a
12622 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/&quot;&gt;example
12623 from last week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
12624
12625 &lt;p&gt;The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
12626 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
12627 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
12628 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
12629 was without royalties and license terms, check out
12630 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12631 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps.&lt;/p&gt;
12632
12633 &lt;p&gt;A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
12634 available from
12635 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos&quot;&gt;the
12636 Xiph.org wiki&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to have a look.  I&#39;m not aware of a
12637 similar list for WebM nor H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
12638
12639 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
12640 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
12641 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
12642 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
12643 </description>
12644         </item>
12645
12646         <item>
12647                 <title>Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt;</title>
12648                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</link>
12649                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</guid>
12650                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
12651                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I discovered
12652 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome&quot;&gt;via
12653 digi.no&lt;/a&gt; that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
12654 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html&quot;&gt;yesterday
12655 announced&lt;/a&gt; plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; in
12656 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a &quot;completely
12657 open&quot; codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
12658 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
12659 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
12660 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  It is not free of cost for creators of video
12661 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
12662 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
12663 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
12664 on the Google announcement is available from
12665 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome&quot;&gt;OSnews&lt;/a&gt;.
12666 A good read. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12667
12668 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
12669 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
12670 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
12671 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
12672 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
12673 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
12674 browsers support H.264, and others support
12675 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; and
12676 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmproject.org/&quot;&gt;WebM&lt;/a&gt;
12677 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diracvideo.org/&quot;&gt;Dirac&lt;/a&gt; is not really an option
12678 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
12679 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
12680 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
12681 Wikipedia keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;an
12682 updated summary&lt;/a&gt; of the current browser support.&lt;/p&gt;
12683
12684 &lt;p&gt;Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
12685 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
12686 &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions&quot;&gt;presents
12687 the mind set&lt;/a&gt; of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
12688 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
12689 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM&quot;&gt;presenting
12690 the issues with H.264&lt;/a&gt;. Both are worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;
12691
12692 &lt;p&gt;Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn&#39;t free,
12693 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
12694 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
12695 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm&quot;&gt;todays
12696 blog post&lt;/a&gt;, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
12697 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
12698 browser while still allowing plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
12699
12700 &lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
12701 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
12702 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
12703 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
12704 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
12705 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
12706 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.&lt;/p&gt;
12707
12708 &lt;p&gt;An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
12709 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
12710 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
12711 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
12712 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
12713 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
12714 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
12715 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
12716 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
12717 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
12718 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
12719 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
12720 I guess time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;
12721
12722 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
12723 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html&quot;&gt;more
12724 background and information on the move&lt;/a&gt; it a blog post yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
12725 </description>
12726         </item>
12727
12728         <item>
12729                 <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
12730                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
12731                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
12732                 <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
12733                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After trying to
12734 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html&quot;&gt;compare
12735 Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; to
12736 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the Digistan
12737 definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
12738 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
12739 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
12740 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
12741 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
12742 reasonable time frame, I will need help.&lt;/p&gt;
12743
12744 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with this work, please visit
12745 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse&quot;&gt;the
12746 wiki pages I have set up for this&lt;/a&gt;, and let me know that you want
12747 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
12748 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
12749 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
12750 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).&lt;/p&gt;
12751
12752 &lt;p&gt;The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
12753 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12754 </description>
12755         </item>
12756
12757         <item>
12758                 <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
12759                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
12760                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
12761                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
12762                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
12763 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;Free and
12764 Open Standard&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
12765 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term &quot;Open Standard&quot; has
12766 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
12767 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
12768 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
12769 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
12770
12771 &lt;p&gt;But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
12772 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
12773 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
12774 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
12775 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard&quot;&gt;wikipedia
12776 page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
12777
12778 &lt;p&gt;First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
12779 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
12780 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
12781 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
12782 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
12783 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
12784 specification on equal terms.&lt;/p&gt;
12785
12786 &lt;blockquote&gt;
12787
12788 &lt;p&gt;The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
12789 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
12790 open standard:&lt;/p&gt;
12791
12792 &lt;ul&gt;
12793
12794 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
12795 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
12796 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
12797 (consensus or majority decision etc.).&lt;/li&gt;
12798
12799 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
12800 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
12801 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
12802 nominal fee.&lt;/li&gt;
12803
12804 &lt;li&gt;The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
12805 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
12806 free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
12807
12808 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
12809
12810 &lt;/ul&gt;
12811 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
12812
12813 &lt;p&gt;Another one originates from my friends over at
12814 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkuug.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;, who coined and gathered
12815 support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;this
12816 definition&lt;/a&gt; in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
12817 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm&quot;&gt;their
12818 definition of a open standard&lt;/a&gt;.  Another from a different part of
12819 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;
12820
12821 &lt;blockquote&gt;
12822
12823 &lt;p&gt;En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:&lt;/p&gt;
12824
12825 &lt;ol&gt;
12826
12827 &lt;li&gt;Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
12828 tilgængelig.&lt;/li&gt;
12829
12830 &lt;li&gt;Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
12831 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.&lt;/li&gt;
12832
12833 &lt;li&gt;Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
12834 &quot;standardiseringsorganisation&quot;) via en åben proces.&lt;/li&gt;
12835
12836 &lt;/ol&gt;
12837
12838 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
12839
12840 &lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html&quot;&gt;the
12841 definition&lt;/a&gt; from Free Software Foundation Europe.&lt;/p&gt;
12842
12843 &lt;blockquote&gt;
12844
12845 &lt;p&gt;An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is&lt;/p&gt;
12846
12847 &lt;ol&gt;
12848
12849 &lt;li&gt;subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
12850 manner equally available to all parties;&lt;/li&gt;
12851
12852 &lt;li&gt;without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
12853 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
12854 Standard themselves;&lt;/li&gt;
12855
12856 &lt;li&gt;free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
12857 any party or in any business model;&lt;/li&gt;
12858
12859 &lt;li&gt;managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
12860 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
12861 parties;&lt;/li&gt;
12862
12863 &lt;li&gt;available in multiple complete implementations by competing
12864 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
12865 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
12866
12867 &lt;/ol&gt;
12868
12869 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
12870
12871 &lt;p&gt;A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
12872 its
12873 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf&quot;&gt;Open
12874 Standards Checklist&lt;/a&gt; with a fairly detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;
12875
12876 &lt;blockquote&gt;
12877 &lt;p&gt;Creation and Management of an Open Standard
12878
12879 &lt;ul&gt;
12880
12881 &lt;li&gt;Its development and management process must be collaborative and
12882   democratic:
12883
12884          &lt;ul&gt;
12885
12886          &lt;li&gt;Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
12887             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
12888             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
12889             and managed.&lt;/li&gt;
12890
12891          &lt;li&gt;The processes must be documented and, through a known
12892             method, can be changed through input from all
12893             participants.&lt;/li&gt;
12894
12895          &lt;li&gt;The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
12896             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.&lt;/li&gt;
12897
12898          &lt;li&gt;Development and management should strive for consensus,
12899             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.&lt;/li&gt;
12900
12901          &lt;li&gt;The standard specification must be open to extensive
12902             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
12903             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.&lt;/li&gt;
12904
12905          &lt;/ul&gt;
12906
12907 &lt;/li&gt;
12908
12909 &lt;/ul&gt;
12910
12911 &lt;p&gt;Use and Licensing of an Open Standard&lt;/p&gt;
12912 &lt;ul&gt;
12913
12914 &lt;li&gt;The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
12915   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
12916   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
12917   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
12918   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.&lt;/li&gt;
12919
12920 &lt;li&gt; The standard must not contain any proprietary &quot;hooks&quot; that create
12921   a technical or economic barriers&lt;/li&gt;
12922
12923 &lt;li&gt;Faithful implementations of the standard must
12924   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
12925   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
12926   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
12927   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
12928   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
12929   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
12930   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
12931   intended to function.&lt;/li&gt;
12932
12933 &lt;li&gt;It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
12934   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
12935   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.&lt;/li&gt;
12936
12937 &lt;li&gt;It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
12938   fees; also known as &quot;royalty free&quot;), worldwide, non-exclusive and
12939   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
12940   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
12941   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
12942   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
12943   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
12944   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
12945
12946       &lt;ul&gt;
12947
12948       &lt;li&gt; May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
12949         licensees&#39; patent claims essential to practice that standard
12950         (also known as a reciprocity clause)&lt;/li&gt;
12951
12952       &lt;li&gt; May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
12953         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
12954         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
12955         &quot;defensive suspension&quot; clause)&lt;/li&gt;
12956
12957       &lt;li&gt; The same licensing terms are available to every potential
12958         licensor&lt;/li&gt;
12959
12960       &lt;/ul&gt;
12961 &lt;/li&gt;
12962
12963 &lt;li&gt;The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
12964   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
12965   or restricted licensing terms&lt;/li&gt;
12966
12967 &lt;/ul&gt;
12968
12969 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
12970
12971 &lt;p&gt;It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
12972 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
12973 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
12974 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
12975 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
12976 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
12977 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
12978 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
12979 Standards.&lt;/p&gt;
12980 </description>
12981         </item>
12982
12983         <item>
12984                 <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
12985                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
12986                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
12987                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
12988                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;The
12989 Digistan definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12990
12991 &lt;blockquote&gt;
12992
12993 &lt;p&gt;The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
12994 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
12995
12996 &lt;ol&gt;
12997
12998 &lt;li&gt;A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
12999 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
13000 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.&lt;/li&gt;
13001
13002 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
13003 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
13004 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
13005 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
13006
13007 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
13008 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
13009 distribute, and use it freely.&lt;/li&gt;
13010
13011 &lt;li&gt;The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
13012 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
13013
13014 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
13015
13016 &lt;/ol&gt;
13017
13018 &lt;p&gt;The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
13019 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
13020 products based on the standard.&lt;/p&gt;
13021 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
13022
13023 &lt;p&gt;For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
13024 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
13025 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
13026 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
13027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html&quot;&gt;in
13028 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;, for those that want to see some background information.
13029 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
13030 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
13031
13032 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free from vendor capture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13033
13034 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
13035 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
13036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/&quot;&gt;Xiph foundation&lt;/A&gt; is such vendor, but
13037 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
13038 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
13039 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
13040 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
13041 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I&#39;ve
13042 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
13043 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
13044 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
13045 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
13046 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
13047 specification.  But it seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;
13048
13049 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13050
13051 &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
13052 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
13053 controlled by a single vendor, it isn&#39;t, but I have not found any
13054 documentation indicating this.&lt;/p&gt;
13055
13056 &lt;p&gt;According to
13057 &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf&quot;&gt;a report&lt;/a&gt;
13058 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
13059 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
13060 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
13061 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
13062 report is correct.&lt;/p&gt;
13063
13064 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification freely available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13065
13066 &lt;p&gt;The specification for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/&quot;&gt;Ogg
13067 container format&lt;/a&gt; and both the
13068 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/&quot;&gt;Vorbis&lt;/a&gt; and
13069 &lt;a href=&quot;http://theora.org/doc/&quot;&gt;Theora&lt;/a&gt; codeces are available on
13070 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
13071
13072 &lt;blockquote&gt;
13073
13074 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
13075 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
13076 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
13077 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
13078 specification compliance.
13079
13080 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
13081
13082 &lt;p&gt;The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
13083 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, and
13084 this is the term:&lt;p&gt;
13085
13086 &lt;blockquote&gt;
13087
13088 &lt;p&gt;This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
13089 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
13090 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
13091 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
13092 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
13093 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
13094 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
13095 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
13096 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
13097 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
13098 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
13099 translate it into languages other than English.&lt;/p&gt;
13100
13101 &lt;p&gt;The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
13102 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.&lt;/p&gt;
13103 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
13104
13105 &lt;p&gt;All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
13106 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
13107 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
13108 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
13109 requirement for the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
13110
13111 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalty-free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13112
13113 &lt;p&gt;There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
13114 Theora format.
13115 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;
13116 and
13117 &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit&quot;&gt;Steve
13118 Jobs&lt;/a&gt; in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
13119 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
13120 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
13121 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
13122 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
13123 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
13124 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.&lt;/p&gt;
13125
13126 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No constraints on re-use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13127
13128 &lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.&lt;/p&gt;
13129
13130 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13131
13132 &lt;p&gt;3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
13133 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
13134 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
13135 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
13136 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
13137 this.&lt;/p&gt;
13138
13139 &lt;p&gt;It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
13140 see if they are free and open standards.&lt;/p&gt;
13141 </description>
13142         </item>
13143
13144         <item>
13145                 <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
13146                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
13147                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
13148                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
13149                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
13150 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece&quot;&gt;an
13151 article&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
13152 2.0 of
13153 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework&quot;&gt;European
13154 Interoperability Framework&lt;/a&gt; has been successfully lobbied by the
13155 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
13156 Nothing very surprising there, given
13157 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe&quot;&gt;earlier
13158 reports&lt;/a&gt; on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
13159 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
13160 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;an
13161 open standard from version 1&lt;/a&gt; was very good, and something I
13162 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
13163 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the
13164 definition from Digistan&lt;/A&gt;.  Version 2 have removed the open
13165 standard definition from its content.&lt;/p&gt;
13166
13167 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
13168 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
13169 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
13170 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
13171 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
13172 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html&quot;&gt;my
13173 source&lt;/a&gt; to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
13174 background information about that story is available in
13175 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from
13176 Linux Journal in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;
13177
13178 &lt;blockquote&gt;
13179 &lt;p&gt;Lima, 8th of April, 2002&lt;br&gt;
13180 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ&lt;br&gt;
13181 General Manager of Microsoft Perú&lt;/p&gt;
13182
13183 &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir:&lt;/p&gt;
13184
13185 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13186
13187 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13188
13189 &lt;p&gt;With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call &quot;open source software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;free software&quot;, 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 &quot;commercial software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;proprietary&quot; or &quot;unfree&quot;, given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.&lt;/p&gt;
13190
13191 &lt;p&gt;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:&lt;/p&gt;
13192
13193 &lt;p&gt;
13194 &lt;ul&gt;
13195 &lt;li&gt;Free access to public information by the citizen. &lt;/li&gt;
13196 &lt;li&gt;Permanence of public data. &lt;/li&gt;
13197 &lt;li&gt;Security of the State and citizens.&lt;/li&gt;
13198 &lt;/ul&gt;
13199 &lt;/p&gt;
13200
13201 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13202
13203 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13204
13205 &lt;p&gt;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*. &lt;/p&gt;
13206
13207 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13208
13209 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13210
13211
13212 &lt;p&gt;From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:&lt;br&gt;
13213 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
13214 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
13215 &lt;li&gt;the law does not specify which concrete software to use&lt;/li&gt;
13216 &lt;li&gt;the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought&lt;/li&gt;
13217 &lt;li&gt;the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.&lt;/li&gt;
13218
13219 &lt;/p&gt;
13220
13221 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13222
13223 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13224
13225 &lt;p&gt;As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;
13226
13227 &lt;p&gt;Firstly, you point out that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13228
13229 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13230
13231 &lt;p&gt;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).&lt;/p&gt;
13232
13233 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13234
13235 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13236
13237 &lt;p&gt;By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office &quot;suite&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13238
13239 &lt;p&gt;To continue; you note that:&quot; 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...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13240
13241 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;non-competitive ... practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13242
13243 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;a priori&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13244
13245 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13246
13247 &lt;p&gt;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&#39; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13248
13249 &lt;p&gt;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: &quot;update your software to the new version&quot; (at the user&#39;s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider&#39;s judgment alone, are &quot;old&quot;; 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 &quot;trapped&quot; 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).&lt;/p&gt;
13250
13251 &lt;p&gt;You add: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13252
13253 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13254
13255 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13256
13257 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13258
13259 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13260
13261 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;ad hoc&quot; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13262
13263 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13264
13265 &lt;p&gt;Your letter continues: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13266
13267 &lt;p&gt;Alluding in an abstract way to &quot;the dangers this can bring&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13268
13269 &lt;p&gt;On security:&lt;/p&gt;
13270
13271 &lt;p&gt;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 &quot;bugs&quot; (in programmers&#39; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13272
13273 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13274
13275 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13276
13277 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;
13278
13279 &lt;p&gt;As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the &quot;End User License Agreement&quot; 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&#39;&#39;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13280
13281 &lt;p&gt;On Intellectual Property:&lt;/p&gt;
13282
13283 &lt;p&gt;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&#39;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).&lt;/p&gt;
13284
13285 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13286
13287 &lt;p&gt;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).&lt;/p&gt;
13288
13289 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13290
13291 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13292
13293 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13294
13295 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13296
13297 &lt;p&gt;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 (&quot;blue screens of death&quot;, 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13298
13299 &lt;p&gt;You further state that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13300
13301 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13302
13303 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13304
13305 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13306
13307 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13308
13309 &lt;p&gt;The second argument refers to &quot;problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector&quot; 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.&lt;/p&gt;
13310
13311 &lt;p&gt;You then say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13312
13313 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13314
13315 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13316
13317 &lt;p&gt;You continue by observing that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13318
13319 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13320
13321 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13322
13323 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13324
13325 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13326
13327 &lt;p&gt;You then state that: &quot;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.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13328
13329 &lt;p&gt;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&#39;t have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That&#39;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13330
13331 &lt;p&gt;You end with a rhetorical question: &quot;13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn&#39;t it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
13332
13333 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13334
13335 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13336
13337 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13338
13339 &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;
13340
13341 &lt;p&gt;Cordially,&lt;br&gt;
13342 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ&lt;br&gt;
13343 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.&lt;/p&gt;
13344 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
13345 </description>
13346         </item>
13347
13348         <item>
13349                 <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
13350                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
13351                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
13352                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
13353                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago I
13354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html&quot;&gt;wrote
13355 a bit&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;,
13356 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
13357 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.&lt;/p&gt;
13358
13359 &lt;p&gt;I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
13360 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
13361 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
13362 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
13363 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
13364 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
13365 got such a great test tool available.&lt;/p&gt;
13366 </description>
13367         </item>
13368
13369         <item>
13370                 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
13371                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
13372                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
13373                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
13374                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
13375 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
13376 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
13377 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13378 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
13379 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
13380 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13381 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13382 university.&lt;/p&gt;
13383
13384 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13385 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
13386 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13387 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
13388 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13389 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13390 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13391 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
13392
13393 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
13394 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
13395
13396 &lt;ul&gt;
13397
13398 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working?  I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13399 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
13400 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
13401
13402 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
13403 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
13404
13405 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
13406 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13407 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
13408
13409 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13410 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
13411 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13412 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
13413 normally test this by playing
13414 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
13415 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
13416
13417 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
13418 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
13419
13420 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13421 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
13422
13423 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
13424 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
13425
13426 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13427 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
13428 few.&lt;/li&gt;
13429
13430 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
13431 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13432 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
13433
13434 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I&#39;m testing if the
13435 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13436 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
13437
13438 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13439 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13440 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
13441 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13442 not.&lt;/li&gt;
13443
13444 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13445 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13446 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13447 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
13448
13449 &lt;/ul&gt;
13450
13451 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13452 for the HP machines I am testing.  I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
13453 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
13454 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13455 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
13456 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
13457 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13458 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
13459 </description>
13460         </item>
13461
13462         <item>
13463                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
13464                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
13465                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
13466                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
13467                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
13468 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
13469 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13470 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
13471
13472 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13473 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13474 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13475 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13476 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13477 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
13478 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
13479 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
13480 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
13481 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
13482 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
13483 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
13484 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
13485 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13486 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13487 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13488 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
13489 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13490 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13491 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
13492
13493 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13494 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13495 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13496 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13497 If the Skolelinux foundation
13498 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
13499 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13500 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13501 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13502 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
13503 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
13504 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13505 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
13506
13507 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13508 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
13509 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13510 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13511 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
13512 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13513 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
13514 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13515 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13516 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13517 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
13518 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13519 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13520 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13521 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
13522
13523 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13524 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13525 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13526 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
13527 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13528 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13529 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13530 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
13531 BitCoins.  Check out
13532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
13533 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
13534 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13535 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13536 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
13537
13538 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
13539 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
13540 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13541 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
13542 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
13543 </description>
13544         </item>
13545
13546         <item>
13547                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
13548                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
13549                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
13550                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
13551                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
13552 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
13553 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
13554 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
13555 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13556 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13557 A blog post from
13558 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
13559 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
13560 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
13561 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
13562 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13563 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13564 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
13565
13566 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
13567 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13568 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13569 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13570 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
13571 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
13572 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13573 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
13574 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
13575 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
13576
13577 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13578 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
13579 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
13580 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
13581 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
13582 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13583 you can even get
13584 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
13585 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
13586 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
13587 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
13588
13589 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13590 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13591 donations to the address
13592 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
13593 </description>
13594         </item>
13595
13596         <item>
13597                 <title>Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</title>
13598                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</link>
13599                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</guid>
13600                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Dec 2010 19:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
13601                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
13602 student assosiation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robotica.no/&quot;&gt;Robotica
13603 Osloensis&lt;/a&gt; at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
13604 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
13605 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
13606 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
13607 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
13608 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
13609 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
13610 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
13611 operational.&lt;/p&gt;
13612
13613 &lt;p&gt;The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
13614 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
13615 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
13616 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thingiverse.com/&quot;&gt;Thingiverse&lt;/a&gt;.  I even got
13617 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
13618 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
13619 very cool 3D scanner.&lt;/p&gt;
13620 </description>
13621         </item>
13622
13623         <item>
13624                 <title>Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</title>
13625                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</link>
13626                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</guid>
13627                 <pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
13628                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13629 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo&quot;&gt;development
13630 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
13631 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
13632 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
13633 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
13634
13635 &lt;p&gt;On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
13636 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
13637 will hold its
13638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010&quot;&gt;General Assembly
13639 for 2010&lt;/a&gt;.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
13640 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
13641 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
13642 vote this year.&lt;/p&gt;
13643 </description>
13644         </item>
13645
13646         <item>
13647                 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
13648                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
13649                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
13650                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
13651                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13652 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13653 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13654 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13655 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
13656 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13657 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13658 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
13659
13660 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13661 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
13662 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
13663 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13664 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13665 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
13666 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
13667 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13668 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
13669 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13670 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
13671
13672 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13673 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13674 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
13675 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13676 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
13677 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13678 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13679 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13680 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13681 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
13682 </description>
13683         </item>
13684
13685         <item>
13686                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
13687                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
13688                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
13689                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
13690                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13691 upgrade testing of the
13692 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
13693 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
13694 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13695 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
13696
13697 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
13698
13699 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13700
13701 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13702   apache2.2-bin
13703   aptdaemon
13704   baobab
13705   binfmt-support
13706   browser-plugin-gnash
13707   cheese-common
13708   cli-common
13709   cups-pk-helper
13710   dmz-cursor-theme
13711   empathy
13712   empathy-common
13713   freedesktop-sound-theme
13714   freeglut3
13715   gconf-defaults-service
13716   gdm-themes
13717   gedit-plugins
13718   geoclue
13719   geoclue-hostip
13720   geoclue-localnet
13721   geoclue-manual
13722   geoclue-yahoo
13723   gnash
13724   gnash-common
13725   gnome
13726   gnome-backgrounds
13727   gnome-cards-data
13728   gnome-codec-install
13729   gnome-core
13730   gnome-desktop-environment
13731   gnome-disk-utility
13732   gnome-screenshot
13733   gnome-search-tool
13734   gnome-session-canberra
13735   gnome-system-log
13736   gnome-themes-extras
13737   gnome-themes-more
13738   gnome-user-share
13739   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
13740   gstreamer0.10-tools
13741   gtk2-engines
13742   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
13743   gtk2-engines-smooth
13744   hamster-applet
13745   libapache2-mod-dnssd
13746   libapr1
13747   libaprutil1
13748   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
13749   libaprutil1-ldap
13750   libart2.0-cil
13751   libboost-date-time1.42.0
13752   libboost-python1.42.0
13753   libboost-thread1.42.0
13754   libchamplain-0.4-0
13755   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
13756   libcheese-gtk18
13757   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
13758   libcryptui0
13759   libdiscid0
13760   libelf1
13761   libepc-1.0-2
13762   libepc-common
13763   libepc-ui-1.0-2
13764   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
13765   libfreerdp0
13766   libgconf2.0-cil
13767   libgdata-common
13768   libgdata7
13769   libgdu-gtk0
13770   libgee2
13771   libgeoclue0
13772   libgexiv2-0
13773   libgif4
13774   libglade2.0-cil
13775   libglib2.0-cil
13776   libgmime2.4-cil
13777   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
13778   libgnome2.24-cil
13779   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
13780   libgpod-common
13781   libgpod4
13782   libgtk2.0-cil
13783   libgtkglext1
13784   libgtksourceview2.0-common
13785   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
13786   libmono-addins0.2-cil
13787   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
13788   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
13789   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
13790   libmono-posix2.0-cil
13791   libmono-security2.0-cil
13792   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
13793   libmono-system2.0-cil
13794   libmtp8
13795   libmusicbrainz3-6
13796   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
13797   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
13798   libopal3.6.8
13799   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
13800   libpt2.6.7
13801   libpython2.6
13802   librpm1
13803   librpmio1
13804   libsdl1.2debian
13805   libsrtp0
13806   libssh-4
13807   libtelepathy-farsight0
13808   libtelepathy-glib0
13809   libtidy-0.99-0
13810   media-player-info
13811   mesa-utils
13812   mono-2.0-gac
13813   mono-gac
13814   mono-runtime
13815   nautilus-sendto
13816   nautilus-sendto-empathy
13817   p7zip-full
13818   pkg-config
13819   python-aptdaemon
13820   python-aptdaemon-gtk
13821   python-axiom
13822   python-beautifulsoup
13823   python-bugbuddy
13824   python-clientform
13825   python-coherence
13826   python-configobj
13827   python-crypto
13828   python-cupshelpers
13829   python-elementtree
13830   python-epsilon
13831   python-evolution
13832   python-feedparser
13833   python-gdata
13834   python-gdbm
13835   python-gst0.10
13836   python-gtkglext1
13837   python-gtksourceview2
13838   python-httplib2
13839   python-louie
13840   python-mako
13841   python-markupsafe
13842   python-mechanize
13843   python-nevow
13844   python-notify
13845   python-opengl
13846   python-openssl
13847   python-pam
13848   python-pkg-resources
13849   python-pyasn1
13850   python-pysqlite2
13851   python-rdflib
13852   python-serial
13853   python-tagpy
13854   python-twisted-bin
13855   python-twisted-conch
13856   python-twisted-core
13857   python-twisted-web
13858   python-utidylib
13859   python-webkit
13860   python-xdg
13861   python-zope.interface
13862   remmina
13863   remmina-plugin-data
13864   remmina-plugin-rdp
13865   remmina-plugin-vnc
13866   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
13867   rhythmbox-plugins
13868   rpm-common
13869   rpm2cpio
13870   seahorse-plugins
13871   shotwell
13872   software-center
13873   system-config-printer-udev
13874   telepathy-gabble
13875   telepathy-mission-control-5
13876   telepathy-salut
13877   tomboy
13878   totem
13879   totem-coherence
13880   totem-mozilla
13881   totem-plugins
13882   transmission-common
13883   xdg-user-dirs
13884   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
13885   xserver-xephyr
13886 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13887
13888 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13889
13890 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13891   cheese
13892   ekiga
13893   eog
13894   epiphany-extensions
13895   evolution-exchange
13896   fast-user-switch-applet
13897   file-roller
13898   gcalctool
13899   gconf-editor
13900   gdm
13901   gedit
13902   gedit-common
13903   gnome-games
13904   gnome-games-data
13905   gnome-nettool
13906   gnome-system-tools
13907   gnome-themes
13908   gnuchess
13909   gucharmap
13910   guile-1.8-libs
13911   libavahi-ui0
13912   libdmx1
13913   libgalago3
13914   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
13915   libgtksourceview2.0-0
13916   liblircclient0
13917   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
13918   libspeexdsp1
13919   libsvga1
13920   rhythmbox
13921   seahorse
13922   sound-juicer
13923   system-config-printer
13924   totem-common
13925   transmission-gtk
13926   vinagre
13927   vino
13928 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13929
13930 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
13931
13932 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13933   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
13934 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13935
13936 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
13937
13938 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13939 [nothing]
13940 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13941
13942 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
13943
13944 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13945
13946 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13947   ksmserver
13948 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13949
13950 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
13951
13952 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13953   kwin
13954   network-manager-kde
13955 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13956
13957 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
13958
13959 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
13960   arts
13961   dolphin
13962   freespacenotifier
13963   google-gadgets-gst
13964   google-gadgets-xul
13965   kappfinder
13966   kcalc
13967   kcharselect
13968   kde-core
13969   kde-plasma-desktop
13970   kde-standard
13971   kde-window-manager
13972   kdeartwork
13973   kdeartwork-emoticons
13974   kdeartwork-style
13975   kdeartwork-theme-icon
13976   kdebase
13977   kdebase-apps
13978   kdebase-workspace
13979   kdebase-workspace-bin
13980   kdebase-workspace-data
13981   kdeeject
13982   kdelibs
13983   kdeplasma-addons
13984   kdeutils
13985   kdewallpapers
13986   kdf
13987   kfloppy
13988   kgpg
13989   khelpcenter4
13990   kinfocenter
13991   konq-plugins-l10n
13992   konqueror-nsplugins
13993   kscreensaver
13994   kscreensaver-xsavers
13995   ktimer
13996   kwrite
13997   libgle3
13998   libkde4-ruby1.8
13999   libkonq5
14000   libkonq5-templates
14001   libnetpbm10
14002   libplasma-ruby
14003   libplasma-ruby1.8
14004   libqt4-ruby1.8
14005   marble-data
14006   marble-plugins
14007   netpbm
14008   nuvola-icon-theme
14009   plasma-dataengines-workspace
14010   plasma-desktop
14011   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14012   plasma-runners-addons
14013   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14014   plasma-scriptengine-python
14015   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14016   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14017   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14018   plasma-scriptengines
14019   plasma-wallpapers-addons
14020   plasma-widget-folderview
14021   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14022   ruby
14023   sweeper
14024   update-notifier-kde
14025   xscreensaver-data-extra
14026   xscreensaver-gl
14027   xscreensaver-gl-extra
14028   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14029 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14030
14031 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
14032
14033 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14034   ark
14035   google-gadgets-common
14036   google-gadgets-qt
14037   htdig
14038   kate
14039   kdebase-bin
14040   kdebase-data
14041   kdepasswd
14042   kfind
14043   klipper
14044   konq-plugins
14045   konqueror
14046   ksysguard
14047   ksysguardd
14048   libarchive1
14049   libcln6
14050   libeet1
14051   libeina-svn-06
14052   libggadget-1.0-0b
14053   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
14054   libgps19
14055   libkdecorations4
14056   libkephal4
14057   libkonq4
14058   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14059   libkscreensaver5
14060   libksgrd4
14061   libksignalplotter4
14062   libkunitconversion4
14063   libkwineffects1a
14064   libmarblewidget4
14065   libntrack-qt4-1
14066   libntrack0
14067   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14068   libplasmaclock4a
14069   libplasmagenericshell4
14070   libprocesscore4a
14071   libprocessui4a
14072   libqalculate5
14073   libqedje0a
14074   libqtruby4shared2
14075   libqzion0a
14076   libruby1.8
14077   libscim8c2a
14078   libsmokekdecore4-3
14079   libsmokekdeui4-3
14080   libsmokekfile3
14081   libsmokekhtml3
14082   libsmokekio3
14083   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
14084   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
14085   libsmokekparts3
14086   libsmokektexteditor3
14087   libsmokekutils3
14088   libsmokenepomuk3
14089   libsmokephonon3
14090   libsmokeplasma3
14091   libsmokeqtcore4-3
14092   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
14093   libsmokeqtgui4-3
14094   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
14095   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
14096   libsmokeqtscript4-3
14097   libsmokeqtsql4-3
14098   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
14099   libsmokeqttest4-3
14100   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
14101   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
14102   libsmokeqtxml4-3
14103   libsmokesolid3
14104   libsmokesoprano3
14105   libtaskmanager4a
14106   libtidy-0.99-0
14107   libweather-ion4a
14108   libxklavier16
14109   libxxf86misc1
14110   okteta
14111   oxygencursors
14112   plasma-dataengines-addons
14113   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
14114   plasma-widget-lancelot
14115   plasma-widgets-addons
14116   plasma-widgets-workspace
14117   polkit-kde-1
14118   ruby1.8
14119   systemsettings
14120   update-notifier-common
14121 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14122
14123 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
14124 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
14125 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
14126 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
14127 </description>
14128         </item>
14129
14130         <item>
14131                 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
14132                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
14133                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
14134                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
14135                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
14136 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
14137 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
14138 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
14139 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
14140 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
14141 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
14142 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
14143 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
14144
14145 &lt;p&gt;I found
14146 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
14147 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
14148 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
14149 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
14150 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
14151 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
14152
14153 &lt;pre&gt;
14154 #!/bin/sh
14155
14156 # Based on
14157 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14158
14159 set -e
14160 set -x
14161
14162 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
14163     echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
14164     exit 1
14165 else
14166     host=&quot;$1&quot;
14167 fi
14168
14169 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14170     echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
14171     exit 1
14172 fi
14173
14174 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
14175 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
14176 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
14177 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14178
14179 img=$host.img
14180 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14181 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14182
14183 parted $img mklabel msdos
14184 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
14185 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14186 parted $img set 1 boot on
14187
14188 modprobe dm-mod
14189 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14190 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14191
14192 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
14193 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14194 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14195
14196 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14197 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14198 &lt;/pre&gt;
14199
14200 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14201 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
14202
14203 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14204 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
14205 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
14206 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
14207 </description>
14208         </item>
14209
14210         <item>
14211                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
14212                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
14213                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
14214                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
14215                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
14216 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
14217 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14218 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
14219
14220 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14221 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14222 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
14223
14224 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
14225
14226 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
14227
14228 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14229   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14230   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
14231   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14232   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14233   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14234   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14235   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14236   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14237   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14238   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14239   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14240   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14241   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14242   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14243   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
14244   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
14245   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
14246   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
14247   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14248   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14249   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
14250   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14251   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14252   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14253   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14254   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14255   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14256   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14257   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14258   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
14259   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
14260   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14261   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14262   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
14263   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
14264   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14265   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14266   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14267   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
14268   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14269   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14270   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14271   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14272   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14273   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14274   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14275   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14276   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14277   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14278   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14279   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14280   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14281   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14282   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14283   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14284   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14285   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14286   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14287   zip
14288 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14289
14290 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14291
14292 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14293   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14294   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14295   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14296   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14297   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14298   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14299   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14300   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
14301   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14302   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
14303   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14304   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14305   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14306   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14307   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
14308   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
14309   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14310   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14311   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14312   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14313   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
14314   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
14315   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14316   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
14317   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14318   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14319   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14320   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14321   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14322 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14323
14324 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
14325
14326 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14327   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14328 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14329
14330 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
14331
14332 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14333 [nothing]
14334 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14335
14336 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
14337
14338 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
14339
14340 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14341   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
14342   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14343   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14344   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14345   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14346   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14347   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14348   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14349   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14350   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14351   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14352   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14353   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14354   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14355   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
14356   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14357   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14358   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14359   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14360   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14361   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14362   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14363   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14364   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14365   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14366   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14367   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14368   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14369   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14370   ttf-sazanami-gothic
14371 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14372
14373 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
14374
14375 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14376   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14377   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14378   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14379   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14380   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14381   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14382   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14383   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14384   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14385   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14386   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14387   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14388   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14389   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14390   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14391   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14392   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
14393   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14394   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14395   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
14396   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14397   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14398   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14399   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14400   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14401   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14402   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14403   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
14404   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
14405   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14406   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14407   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14408   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14409 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14410
14411 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
14412
14413 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14414   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14415   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14416   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14417   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14418   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14419   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14420   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14421 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14422
14423 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
14424
14425 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
14426   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14427 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14428 </description>
14429         </item>
14430
14431         <item>
14432                 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
14433                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
14434                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
14435                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
14436                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
14437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
14438 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
14439 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
14440 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14441 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14442 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14443 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
14444
14445 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14446 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
14447 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
14448 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14449 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
14450 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
14451 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14452 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14453 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14454 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
14455 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14456 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14457 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
14458 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
14459 </description>
14460         </item>
14461
14462         <item>
14463                 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
14464                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
14465                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
14466                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
14467                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14468
14469 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
14470 3D linked in from
14471 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
14472 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14473 </description>
14474         </item>
14475
14476         <item>
14477                 <title>Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</title>
14478                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</link>
14479                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</guid>
14480                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Nov 2010 11:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
14481                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
14482 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; DVD, which is
14483 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
14484 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
14485 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
14486 working using this DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
14487
14488 &lt;p&gt;The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
14489 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
14490 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
14491 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
14492 a patch for debian-cd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/601203&quot;&gt;BTS
14493 report #601203&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and since this change was applied to
14494 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.&lt;/p&gt;
14495
14496 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
14497 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
14498 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
14499 Debian archive.&lt;/p&gt;
14500
14501 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
14502 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
14503 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
14504 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
14505 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
14506 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
14507 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
14508 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
14509 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
14510 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
14511 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
14512 free X driver should work.&lt;/p&gt;
14513
14514 &lt;p&gt;With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
14515 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
14516 DVD more useful again.&lt;/p&gt;
14517 </description>
14518         </item>
14519
14520         <item>
14521                 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
14522                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
14523                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
14524                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
14525                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
14526
14527 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
14528 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
14529 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
14530 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14531 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
14532 :)&lt;/p&gt;
14533
14534 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14535 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14536 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14537 It is called
14538 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
14539 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
14540 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14541 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14542 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14543 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
14544
14545 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
14546 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
14547 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
14548 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14549 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
14550 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14551 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14552 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
14553 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14554 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
14555 </description>
14556         </item>
14557
14558         <item>
14559                 <title>Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</title>
14560                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</link>
14561                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</guid>
14562                 <pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
14563                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is the
14564 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
14565 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
14566 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
14567 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
14568 AVM2 flash files.&lt;/p&gt;
14569
14570 &lt;p&gt;To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
14571 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;a pledge&lt;/a&gt; with the
14572 following text:&lt;/P&gt;
14573
14574 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
14575
14576   &lt;p&gt;&quot;I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
14577   only if 10 other people will do the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
14578
14579   &lt;p&gt;- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer&lt;/p&gt;
14580
14581   &lt;p&gt;Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010&lt;/p&gt;
14582
14583   &lt;p&gt;The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
14584   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
14585   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
14586   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
14587   days. The project web page is available from
14588   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
14589   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
14590   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.&lt;/p&gt;
14591
14592   &lt;p&gt;The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
14593   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
14594   to get this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;
14595
14596   &lt;p&gt;The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
14597   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&quot;&gt;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;
14598
14599 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14600
14601 &lt;p&gt;I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
14602 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
14603 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
14604 :)&lt;/p&gt;
14605 </description>
14606         </item>
14607
14608         <item>
14609                 <title>First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</title>
14610                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</link>
14611                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
14612                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14613                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
14614 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
14615 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
14616 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
14617 I&#39;ve started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
14618 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
14619 robots.&lt;/p&gt;
14620
14621 &lt;p&gt;The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
14622 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
14623 a few less important features too.&lt;/p&gt;
14624
14625 &lt;p&gt;Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
14626 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
14627 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
14628 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.&lt;/p&gt;
14629
14630 &lt;p&gt;Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
14631 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
14632 source or binary package:&lt;/p&gt;
14633
14634 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
14635 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
14636 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
14637 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
14638 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14639
14640 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
14641 please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
14642 </description>
14643         </item>
14644
14645         <item>
14646                 <title>Links for 2010-10-03</title>
14647                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</link>
14648                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</guid>
14649                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14650                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
14651
14652 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars&quot;&gt;There
14653 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
14654
14655 &lt;li&gt;Scanner looking under clothes
14656 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/&quot;&gt;has
14657 already been misused at Heathrow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
14658
14659 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell&quot;&gt;Landell
14660 Webcasting&lt;/a&gt; - interesting alternative for
14661 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;DVSwitch&lt;/a&gt; with
14662 simple setup.
14663
14664 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14665 </description>
14666         </item>
14667
14668         <item>
14669                 <title>Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</title>
14670                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</link>
14671                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</guid>
14672                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
14673                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
14674 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
14675 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
14676 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
14677 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
14678 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
14679 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
14680 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
14681 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
14682
14683 &lt;p&gt;On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
14684 written:&lt;/p&gt;
14685
14686 &lt;blockquote&gt;
14687 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under AT&amp;T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
14688 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
14689 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
14690 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
14691 AT&amp;T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.&lt;/p&gt;
14692
14693 &lt;p&gt;No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
14694 standard.&lt;/p&gt;
14695 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
14696
14697 &lt;p&gt;In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
14698 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
14699 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
14700 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.&lt;/p&gt;
14701
14702 &lt;p&gt;This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
14703 read
14704 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA&quot;&gt;Why
14705 Our Civilization&#39;s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
14706 MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
14707 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;H.264 Is Not
14708 The Sort Of Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps to learn more about
14709 the issue.  The solution is to support the
14710 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
14711 open standards&lt;/a&gt; for video, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg
14712 Theora&lt;/a&gt;, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.&lt;/p&gt;
14713 </description>
14714         </item>
14715
14716         <item>
14717                 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
14718                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
14719                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
14720                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
14721                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
14722 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14723 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
14724 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
14725 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
14726 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14727 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
14728
14729 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
14730 («&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
14731 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14732 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
14733 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
14734 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
14735 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14736 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14737 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
14738
14739 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14740 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14741 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
14742 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14743 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14744 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14745 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14746 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14747 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14748 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
14749
14750 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14751 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14752 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14753 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14754 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14755 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14756 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
14757 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14758 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
14759 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14760 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
14761 </description>
14762         </item>
14763
14764         <item>
14765                 <title>My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</title>
14766                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</link>
14767                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
14768                 <pubDate>Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14769                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
14770 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
14771 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
14772 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
14773 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
14774 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
14775 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
14776 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
14777 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
14778 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
14779 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
14780 drive around.&lt;/p&gt;
14781
14782 &lt;p&gt;The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
14783 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:&lt;/p&gt;
14784
14785 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
14786 use Spykee;
14787 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
14788 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
14789 my $spykee = Spykee-&gt;new();
14790 $spykee-&gt;contact($host, &quot;admin&quot;, &quot;admin&quot;);
14791 $spykee-&gt;left();
14792 sleep 2;
14793 $spykee-&gt;right();
14794 sleep 2;
14795 $spykee-&gt;forward();
14796 sleep 2;
14797 $spykee-&gt;back();
14798 sleep 2;
14799 $spykee-&gt;stop();
14800 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14801
14802 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
14803 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
14804 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I&#39;ve implemented several of
14805 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
14806 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
14807 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
14808 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
14809 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
14810 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
14811 going. :).&lt;/p&gt;
14812
14813 &lt;p&gt;Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
14814 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
14815 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/&quot;&gt;the NUUG wiki&lt;/a&gt; for
14816 those that want to check back later to find it.&lt;/p&gt;
14817 </description>
14818         </item>
14819
14820         <item>
14821                 <title>Broken hard link handling with sshfs</title>
14822                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
14823                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
14824                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14825                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
14826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html&quot;&gt;previous
14827 post about sshfs&lt;/a&gt;.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
14828 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
14829 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
14830 a link count &gt;1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
14831 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:&lt;/p&gt;
14832
14833 &lt;pre&gt;
14834 % ln foo bar
14835 ln: creating hard link `bar&#39; =&gt; `foo&#39;: Function not implemented
14836 %
14837 &lt;/pre&gt;
14838
14839 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
14840 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
14841 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
14842 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
14843 nevertheless. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14844
14845 &lt;p&gt;The latest version of the file system test code is available via
14846 git from
14847 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14848 </description>
14849         </item>
14850
14851         <item>
14852                 <title>Broken umask handling with sshfs</title>
14853                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
14854                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
14855                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14856                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My file system sematics program
14857 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;presented
14858 a few days ago&lt;/a&gt; is very useful to verify that a file system can
14859 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I&#39;m
14860 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
14861 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
14862 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
14863 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
14864 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
14865 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
14866 script:&lt;/p&gt;
14867
14868 &lt;pre&gt;
14869 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
14870   mode_t retval = 0;
14871   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
14872   if (-1 != fd) {
14873     unlink(name);
14874     struct stat statbuf;
14875     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &amp;statbuf)) {
14876       retval = statbuf.st_mode &amp; 0x1ff;
14877     }
14878     close(fd);
14879   }
14880   return retval;
14881 }
14882
14883 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
14884 int test_umask(void) {
14885   printf(&quot;info: testing umask effect on file creation\n&quot;);
14886
14887   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
14888   mode_t newmode;
14889   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
14890     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n&quot;,
14891            newmode);
14892   }
14893   umask(007);
14894   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
14895     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n&quot;,
14896            newmode);
14897   }
14898
14899   umask (orig_umask);
14900   return 0;
14901 }
14902
14903 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
14904   [...]
14905   test_umask();
14906   return 0;
14907 }
14908 &lt;/pre&gt;
14909
14910 &lt;p&gt;Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:&lt;/p&gt;
14911
14912 &lt;pre&gt;
14913 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14914 info: testing symlink creation
14915 info: testing subdirectory creation
14916 info: testing fcntl locking
14917   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14918   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14919   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14920   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14921   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14922   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14923 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14924 &lt;/pre&gt;
14925
14926 &lt;p&gt;When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
14927 result:&lt;/p&gt;
14928
14929 &lt;pre&gt;
14930 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
14931 info: testing symlink creation
14932 info: testing subdirectory creation
14933 info: testing fcntl locking
14934   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14935   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14936   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
14937   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
14938   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
14939   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
14940 info: testing umask effect on file creation
14941   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
14942   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
14943 &lt;/pre&gt;
14944
14945 &lt;p&gt;So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
14946 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
14947 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
14948
14949 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
14950 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/594498&quot;&gt;BTS report #594498&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
14951
14952 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
14953 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
14954 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14955 </description>
14956         </item>
14957
14958         <item>
14959                 <title>Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</title>
14960                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</link>
14961                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</guid>
14962                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
14963                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I found the notes from Rob Weir on
14964 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html&quot;&gt;how
14965 to crush dissent&lt;/a&gt; matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
14966 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
14967 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
14968 long time.&lt;/p&gt;
14969 </description>
14970         </item>
14971
14972         <item>
14973                 <title>No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</title>
14974                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</link>
14975                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</guid>
14976                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Aug 2010 20:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
14977                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
14978 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
14979 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
14980 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
14981 generated configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
14982
14983 &lt;p&gt;What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
14984 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
14985 without any manual configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
14986
14987 &lt;p&gt;This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
14988 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
14989 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
14990 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
14991 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
14992 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
14993 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
14994 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
14995 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
14996 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
14997 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
14998 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
14999 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
15000 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
15001 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
15002 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
15003 use.&lt;/p&gt;
15004
15005 &lt;p&gt;How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
15006 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
15007 working properly out of the box:&lt;/p&gt;
15008
15009 &lt;ul&gt;
15010 &lt;li&gt;IP address/netmask and DNS server.&lt;/li&gt;
15011 &lt;li&gt;Web proxy URL.&lt;/li&gt;
15012 &lt;li&gt;LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).&lt;/li&gt;
15013 &lt;li&gt;Kerberos server for PAM password checking.&lt;/li&gt;
15014 &lt;li&gt;SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
15015 &lt;li&gt;Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
15016 &lt;li&gt;Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
15017 &lt;/ul&gt;
15018
15019 &lt;p&gt;(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)&lt;/p&gt;
15020
15021 &lt;p&gt;The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
15022 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
15023 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
15024 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
15025 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
15026
15027 &lt;p&gt;The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
15028 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
15029 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
15030 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
15031 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
15032 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
15033 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
15034 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.&lt;/p&gt;
15035
15036 &lt;p&gt;The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
15037 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
15038 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
15039 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
15040 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
15041 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
15042 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
15043 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
15044 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
15045 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
15046 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
15047 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15048 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
15049 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I&#39;ve been unable to find a way to
15050 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
15051 current DNS domain is used.&lt;/p&gt;
15052
15053 &lt;p&gt;For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
15054 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
15055 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
15056 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
15057 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
15058 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
15059 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
15060 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
15061 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
15062 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
15063 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
15064 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
15065 should switch those to use sssd too?&lt;/p&gt;
15066
15067 &lt;p&gt;The user&#39;s SMB mount point for the network home directory is
15068 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
15069 consulted to look for the user&#39;s LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
15070 attribute is used if found.  If it isn&#39;t found, the home directory
15071 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
15072 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
15073 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
15074 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
15075 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
15076 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
15077 do for now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
15078
15079 &lt;p&gt;This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
15080 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
15081 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
15082 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
15083 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
15084 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
15085
15086 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15087 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
15088
15089 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
15090 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
15091 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
15092 implement it for Debian Edu. :)&lt;/p&gt;
15093 </description>
15094         </item>
15095
15096         <item>
15097                 <title>Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</title>
15098                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</link>
15099                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</guid>
15100                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Aug 2010 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
15101                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
15102 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
15103 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
15104 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
15105 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
15106 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
15107 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.&lt;/p&gt;
15108
15109 &lt;p&gt;The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
15110 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
15111 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
15112 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
15113 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
15114 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
15115 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.&lt;/p&gt;
15116
15117 &lt;p&gt;As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
15118 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
15119 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
15120 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
15121 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:&lt;/p&gt;
15122
15123 &lt;pre&gt;
15124 /*
15125  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
15126  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
15127  * directory.
15128  * License: GPL v2 or later
15129  *
15130  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
15131  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
15132 */
15133
15134 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
15135 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
15136 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
15137
15138 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
15139
15140 #include &amp;lt;errno.h&gt;
15141 #include &amp;lt;fcntl.h&gt;
15142 #include &amp;lt;stdio.h&gt;
15143 #include &amp;lt;string.h&gt;
15144 #include &amp;lt;stdlib.h&gt;
15145 #include &amp;lt;sys/file.h&gt;
15146 #include &amp;lt;sys/stat.h&gt;
15147 #include &amp;lt;sys/types.h&gt;
15148 #include &amp;lt;unistd.h&gt;
15149
15150 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15151 /*
15152  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
15153  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
15154  * below.
15155  * See also &amp;lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 &gt;.
15156  */
15157 #include &amp;lt;sqlite3.h&gt;
15158 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
15159   &quot;CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); &quot;
15160 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
15161   char *zErrMsg;
15162   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
15163   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
15164   unlink(name);
15165   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &amp;db);
15166   if( rc ){
15167     printf(&quot;error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n&quot;, name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
15168     sqlite3_close(db);
15169     return -1;
15170   }
15171
15172   /* create tables */
15173   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &amp;zErrMsg);
15174   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
15175     printf(&quot;error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n&quot;, zErrMsg);
15176     sqlite3_close(db);
15177     return -1;
15178   }
15179   printf(&quot;info: sqlite worked\n&quot;);
15180   sqlite3_close(db);
15181   return 0;
15182 }
15183 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15184
15185 /*
15186  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
15187  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
15188  * done in the sqlite3 library.
15189  * See also
15190  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html&gt; and the
15191  * POSIX specification
15192  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html&gt;.
15193  */
15194 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
15195   struct flock fl;
15196   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
15197   unlink(name);
15198   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
15199   printf(&quot;info: testing fcntl locking\n&quot;);
15200
15201   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
15202   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
15203   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
15204   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15205   fl.l_len    = 1;
15206   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15207   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15208
15209   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
15210   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15211   fl.l_len    = 510;
15212   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
15213   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15214
15215   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
15216   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15217   fl.l_len    = 1;
15218   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15219   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15220
15221   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
15222   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15223   fl.l_len    = 1;
15224   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
15225   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15226
15227   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
15228   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
15229   fl.l_len    = 510;
15230   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15231
15232   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
15233   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
15234   fl.l_len    = 2;
15235   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
15236   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
15237
15238   close(fd);
15239   return 0;
15240 }
15241
15242 /*
15243  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
15244  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
15245  * Mounting with option &#39;sync&#39; seem to solve this problem while
15246  * slowing down file operations.
15247  */
15248 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
15249 #define LEVELS 5
15250   char *path = strdup(&quot;test&quot;);
15251   char *dirs[LEVELS];
15252   int level;
15253   printf(&quot;info: testing subdirectory creation\n&quot;);
15254   for (level = 0; level &amp;lt; LEVELS; level++) {
15255     char *newpath = NULL;
15256     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
15257       printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create directory &#39;%s&#39;: %s\n&quot;,
15258              path, strerror(errno));
15259       break;
15260     }
15261     asprintf(&amp;newpath, &quot;%s/%s&quot;, path, &quot;test&quot;);
15262     free(path);
15263     path = newpath;
15264   }
15265   return 0;
15266 }
15267
15268 /*
15269  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
15270  * KDE.
15271  */
15272 int test_symlinks(void) {
15273   printf(&quot;info: testing symlink creation\n&quot;);
15274   unlink(&quot;symlink&quot;);
15275   if (-1 == symlink(&quot;file&quot;, &quot;symlink&quot;))
15276     printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create symlink\n&quot;);
15277   return 0;
15278 }
15279
15280 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
15281   printf(&quot;Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n&quot;);
15282   test_symlinks();
15283   test_subdirectory_creation();
15284 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
15285   test_sqlite_open();
15286 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
15287   test_gcompris_locking();
15288   return 0;
15289 }
15290 &lt;/pre&gt;
15291
15292 &lt;p&gt;When everything is working, it should print something like
15293 this:&lt;/p&gt;
15294
15295 &lt;pre&gt;
15296 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
15297 info: testing symlink creation
15298 info: testing subdirectory creation
15299 info: sqlite worked
15300 info: testing fcntl locking
15301   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15302   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15303   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
15304   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
15305   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
15306   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
15307 &lt;/pre&gt;
15308
15309 &lt;p&gt;I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
15310 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
15311 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
15312 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
15313 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
15314 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
15315 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
15316 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.&lt;/p&gt;
15317
15318 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
15319 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
15320
15321 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
15322 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
15323 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
15324 </description>
15325         </item>
15326
15327         <item>
15328                 <title>Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</title>
15329                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
15330                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
15331                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
15332                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I
15333 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html&quot;&gt;tried
15334 to install&lt;/a&gt; a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
15335 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
15336 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
15337 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
15338 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
15339 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
15340 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
15341 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.&lt;/p&gt;
15342
15343 &lt;p&gt;With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
15344 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
15345 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
15346 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
15347 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
15348 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
15349 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
15350 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
15351 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
15352 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
15353 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
15354 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
15355 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
15356 gave it a IP address.&lt;/p&gt;
15357
15358 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
15359 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
15360 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
15361 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
15362 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
15363 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
15364 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
15365 uppercase version of $domain.&lt;/p&gt;
15366
15367 &lt;p&gt;So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
15368 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
15369 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
15370 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
15371 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
15372 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(&lt;/p&gt;
15373
15374 &lt;p&gt;With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
15375 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
15376 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
15377 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
15378 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
15379 with UID and GID values.&lt;/p&gt;
15380
15381 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
15382 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
15383 </description>
15384         </item>
15385
15386         <item>
15387                 <title>Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</title>
15388                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</link>
15389                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</guid>
15390                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
15391                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
15392 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
15393 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
15394 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
15395 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
15396 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
15397 servers.&lt;/p&gt;
15398
15399 &lt;p&gt;I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
15400 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
15401 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
15402 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
15403 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
15404 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
15405 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
15406 .uio.no.&lt;/p&gt;
15407
15408 &lt;p&gt;This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
15409 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
15410 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
15411 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
15412 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
15413 university servers.&lt;/p&gt;
15414
15415 &lt;p&gt;My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
15416 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
15417 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
15418 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
15419 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
15420 uses.&lt;/p&gt;
15421 </description>
15422         </item>
15423
15424         <item>
15425                 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
15426                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
15427                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
15428                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
15429                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
15430 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
15431 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;.  A few packages
15432 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
15433 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
15434 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
15435
15436 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
15437 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
15438 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
15439 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
15440 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
15441 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
15442 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
15443 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
15444
15445 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
15446
15447 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15448 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
15449  perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
15450   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
15451 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
15452  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
15453 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15454
15455 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
15456 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
15457 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
15458 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
15459 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
15460 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
15461 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
15462 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
15463
15464 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
15465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
15466 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
15467 dependencies
15468 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
15469 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
15470
15471 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
15472 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
15473 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
15474 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
15475 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
15476 it.&lt;/p&gt;
15477 </description>
15478         </item>
15479
15480         <item>
15481                 <title>First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</title>
15482                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</link>
15483                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</guid>
15484                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
15485                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
15486 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
15487 completed.&lt;/p&gt;
15488
15489 &lt;blockquote&gt;
15490 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
15491 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
15492 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
15493 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
15494 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
15495 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
15496 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
15497 language of choice, please let us know too.&lt;/p&gt;
15498
15499 &lt;p&gt;In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
15500 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
15501 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;
15502
15503 &lt;p&gt;The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
15504 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
15505 much.&lt;/p&gt;
15506
15507 &lt;p&gt;Changes compared to the lenny based version&lt;/p&gt;
15508
15509 &lt;ul&gt;
15510 &lt;li&gt;Everything from Debian Squeeze
15511 &lt;ul&gt;
15512   &lt;li&gt;Desktop environment KDE 4.4 =&gt; the new KDE desktop in
15513          combination with some new artwork
15514   &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
15515   &lt;li&gt;OpenOffice.org 3.2
15516   &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
15517   &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
15518   &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
15519   &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
15520   &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
15521   &lt;li&gt;3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
15522   &lt;li&gt;Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
15523 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
15524 &lt;li&gt;Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
15525     Enabled for:
15526 &lt;ul&gt;
15527   &lt;li&gt;PAM
15528   &lt;li&gt;LDAP
15529   &lt;li&gt;IMAP
15530   &lt;li&gt;SMTP (sender verification)
15531 &lt;/ul&gt;
15532 &lt;/li&gt;
15533 &lt;li&gt;New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.&lt;/li&gt;
15534 &lt;li&gt;Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
15535     fetched from LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
15536 &lt;li&gt;New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.&lt;/li&gt;
15537 &lt;li&gt;General cleanup (not finished)&lt;/li&gt;
15538 &lt;/ul&gt;
15539 &lt;p&gt;The following features are not working as they should&lt;/p&gt;
15540
15541 &lt;ul&gt;
15542 &lt;li&gt;No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
15543     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
15544     for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
15545 &lt;li&gt;DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
15546     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
15547     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.&lt;/li&gt;
15548 &lt;li&gt;The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
15549 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.&lt;/li&gt;
15550 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.&lt;/li&gt;
15551 &lt;li&gt;Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
15552     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
15553 &lt;li&gt;The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
15554     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
15555     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.&lt;/li&gt;
15556 &lt;li&gt;Some packages lack translations. See
15557     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
15558     and help out with translations.&lt;/li&gt;
15559 &lt;/ul&gt;
15560
15561 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
15562
15563 &lt;ul&gt;
15564 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
15565 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
15566 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15567 &lt;/ul&gt;
15568 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch dvd release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
15569
15570 &lt;ul&gt;
15571 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
15572 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
15573 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15574 &lt;/ul&gt;
15575
15576 &lt;p&gt;There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
15577 get closer to the final release.&lt;/p&gt;
15578
15579 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
15580
15581 &lt;ul&gt;
15582 &lt;li&gt;3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15583 &lt;li&gt;22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15584 &lt;/ul&gt;
15585
15586 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
15587 &lt;ul&gt;
15588 &lt;li&gt;c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15589 &lt;li&gt;2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
15590 &lt;/ul&gt;
15591 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs:
15592 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla&lt;/p&gt;
15593
15594 &lt;p&gt;Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/p&gt;
15595 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
15596 </description>
15597         </item>
15598
15599         <item>
15600                 <title>One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</title>
15601                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
15602                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
15603                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
15604                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
15605 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
15606 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
15607 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
15608 getting rid of password questions one at the time.&lt;/p&gt;
15609
15610 &lt;p&gt;It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
15611 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
15612 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
15613 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
15614 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
15615 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
15616 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.&lt;/p&gt;
15617
15618 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
15619 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
15620 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
15621 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
15622 up. :)&lt;/p&gt;
15623
15624 &lt;p&gt;One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
15625 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
15626 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.&lt;/p&gt;
15627
15628 &lt;p&gt;We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
15629 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
15630 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
15631 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
15632 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
15633 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
15634 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
15635 release another day.&lt;/p&gt;
15636
15637 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
15638 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
15639 </description>
15640         </item>
15641
15642         <item>
15643                 <title>OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</title>
15644                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</link>
15645                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</guid>
15646                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
15647                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to
15648 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home&quot;&gt;todays
15649 opengeodata blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, I just discovered that the
15650 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
15651 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT&quot;&gt;support
15652 for calculating routes&lt;/a&gt;.  The support is still experimental and
15653 only available from the development server, until more experience is
15654 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.&lt;/p&gt;
15655
15656 &lt;p&gt;Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
15657 was provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.cloudmade.com/&quot;&gt;Cloudmade&lt;/a&gt;,
15658 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
15659 the issue.  I&#39;ve had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
15660 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
15661 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
15662 www.openstreetmap.org front page.&lt;/p&gt;
15663 </description>
15664         </item>
15665
15666         <item>
15667                 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
15668                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
15669                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
15670                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
15671                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
15672 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
15673 on my
15674 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
15675 work&lt;/a&gt; on
15676 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
15677 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
15678
15679 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15680 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15681 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
15682 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
15683
15684 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15685 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15686 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
15687
15688 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
15689
15690 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
15691 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15692 the web.
15693
15694 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15695 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15696 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
15697 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15698 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15699 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
15700
15701 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15702 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15703 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
15704 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
15705 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
15706 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry.  For
15707 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15708 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15709 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15710 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15711 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15712 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
15713 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15714 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15715 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
15716 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
15717
15718 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15719 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15720   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15721   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15722   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15723   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15724   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15725   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15726
15727 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15728   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15729   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
15730   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15731   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15732   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15733 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15734
15735 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15736 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15737 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
15738 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15739 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
15740
15741 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15742 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15743 objectclass: top
15744 objectclass: dnsdomain
15745 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15746 dc: tjener
15747 arecord: 10.0.2.2
15748 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15749
15750 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15751 objectclass: top
15752 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15753 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15754 dc: 2
15755 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15756 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15757 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15758
15759 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
15760 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
15761 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15762 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15763 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15764 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15765 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
15766 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
15767 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15768 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15769 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15770 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
15771
15772 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15773 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
15774
15775 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15776 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15777   &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15778   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15779   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15780   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15781   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15782
15783 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15784   &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15785 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15786
15787 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15788 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15789 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
15790
15791 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15792 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15793 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
15794 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
15795
15796 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
15797 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
15798 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
15799
15800 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15801 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15802 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
15803 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15804 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
15805
15806 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15807 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15808 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15809 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15810 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
15811
15812 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15813 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15814 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15815 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15816 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15817 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
15818
15819 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15820 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
15821     SUP top
15822     AUXILIARY
15823     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15824           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15825           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15826           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15827           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15828     ))
15829 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15830
15831 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15832 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15833 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
15834 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15835 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15836 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
15837
15838 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
15839
15840 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15841 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
15842 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15843 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15844 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
15845
15846 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15847 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15848 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
15849 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
15850
15851 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15852 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
15853 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
15854 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15855
15856 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15857 configuration it need.  The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
15858 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;.  The
15859 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
15860
15861 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15862 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15863 cn: dhcp
15864 objectClass: top
15865 objectClass: dhcpServer
15866 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15867 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15868
15869 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15870 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
15871 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
15872 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
15873 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
15874 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
15875
15876 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15877 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15878 cn: DHCP Config
15879 objectClass: top
15880 objectClass: dhcpService
15881 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15882 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15883 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15884 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15885 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
15886 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
15887 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
15888 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15889
15890 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
15891 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15892 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15893 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15894 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
15895 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
15896 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15897 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15898 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
15899
15900 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15901 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
15902 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
15903 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15904 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter.  This is what a host object look
15905 like:&lt;/p&gt;
15906
15907 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15908 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15909 cn: hostname
15910 objectClass: top
15911 objectClass: dhcpHost
15912 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15913 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15914 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15915
15916 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15917 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15918 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
15919 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15920 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
15921 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15922 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15923 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15924 structural object class.
15925
15926 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
15927
15928 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15929 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
15930 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
15931 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15932 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
15933
15934 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15935 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15936 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15937 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15938 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15939 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
15940
15941 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15942 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
15943
15944 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15945 ou=services
15946   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15947     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15948     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15949       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15950         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15951     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15952       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15953         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15954     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15955       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15956 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15957
15958 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15959 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15960 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15961 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
15962
15963 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15964 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
15965
15966 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
15967 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15968 dc: hostname
15969 objectClass: top
15970 objectClass: dhcpHost
15971 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15972 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15973 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15974 arecord: 10.11.12.13
15975 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
15976 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15977 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
15978
15979 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15980 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15981 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
15982 </description>
15983         </item>
15984
15985         <item>
15986                 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
15987                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
15988                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
15989                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
15990                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15991 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15992 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15993 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15994 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
15995
15996 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15997 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
15998
15999 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
16000 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
16001 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
16002 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
16003 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
16004 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
16005
16006 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
16007 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
16008 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
16009 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
16010 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
16011 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
16012
16013 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
16014 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
16015 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
16016 this:&lt;/p&gt;
16017
16018 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16019   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16020   cn: hostname
16021   objectClass: dhcphost
16022   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
16023   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
16024   associateddomain: hostname.intern
16025   arecord: 10.11.12.13
16026   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
16027   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
16028   ldapconfigsound: Y
16029 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16030
16031 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
16032 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
16033 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
16034 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
16035
16036 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
16037 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
16038 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
16039 that.  If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
16040 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
16041 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
16042 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
16043 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
16044
16045 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16046 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
16047 </description>
16048         </item>
16049
16050         <item>
16051                 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
16052                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
16053                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
16054                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
16055                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
16056 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
16057 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
16058 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
16059
16060 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
16061 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
16062 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
16063 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
16064 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
16065
16066 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
16067 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
16068 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
16069
16070 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
16071 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
16072 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
16073
16074 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16075 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
16076 #
16077 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
16078 #
16079 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
16080 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
16081 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
16082 #
16083 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
16084 # existence of attribute names.
16085 #
16086 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
16087 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
16088 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
16089 #
16090 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
16091 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
16092 #
16093 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
16094 #     SUP top
16095 #     AUXILIARY
16096 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
16097
16098 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
16099 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
16100     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
16101     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
16102         filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
16103         ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
16104             grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
16105             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
16106             attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
16107             # bass value on to clients
16108             eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
16109         done
16110     done
16111 fi
16112 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16113
16114 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
16115 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
16116 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
16117 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
16118 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
16119
16120 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16121 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
16122
16123 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
16124 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
16125 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
16126 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  I found its
16127 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
16128 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
16129 </description>
16130         </item>
16131
16132         <item>
16133                 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
16134                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
16135                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
16136                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
16137                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
16138 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
16139 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
16140 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
16141 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
16142 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
16143 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
16144 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
16145 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
16146 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
16147 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
16148 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
16149 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
16150 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
16151 </description>
16152         </item>
16153
16154         <item>
16155                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
16156                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
16157                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
16158                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
16159                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
16160 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
16161 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of the
16162 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I&#39;m
16163 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
16164 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
16165 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
16166 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
16167
16168 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
16169 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
16170 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
16171 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
16172 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
16173
16174 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
16175
16176 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
16177   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16178   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
16179   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
16180   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16181   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
16182   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16183   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
16184   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
16185 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16186
16187 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
16188
16189 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
16190   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
16191   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
16192   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
16193   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
16194   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
16195   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
16196   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16197   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16198   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16199   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16200   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
16201   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
16202   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
16203   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
16204   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
16205   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
16206   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
16207   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
16208   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
16209   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
16210 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16211
16212 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
16213
16214 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
16215   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
16216   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
16217   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16218   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16219   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
16220   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
16221   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
16222   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16223   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16224   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16225   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16226   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
16227   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
16228   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
16229   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
16230   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
16231   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
16232   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
16233   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
16234   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
16235   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
16236 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16237
16238 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
16239
16240 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
16241   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
16242   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
16243   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
16244 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16245
16246 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
16247 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
16248 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
16249 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
16250 the difference somewhat.
16251 </description>
16252         </item>
16253
16254         <item>
16255                 <title>Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</title>
16256                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</link>
16257                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</guid>
16258                 <pubDate>Thu, 1 Jul 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
16259                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
16260 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
16261 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
16262 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
16263 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
16264 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
16265 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
16266 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
16267 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.&lt;/p&gt;
16268
16269 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
16270
16271 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
16272 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
16273 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
16274 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
16275 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
16276 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
16277 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
16278 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
16279 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
16280 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
16281 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/568577&quot;&gt;bug #568577&lt;/a&gt; is in the
16282 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
16283 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
16284 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
16285 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.&lt;/p&gt;
16286
16287 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured&lt;/p&gt;
16288
16289 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16290 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
16291 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16292
16293 &lt;p&gt;The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
16294 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
16295 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
16296 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I&#39;ve been unable to get TLS
16297 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
16298 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
16299 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
16300 on how to get this working.&lt;/p&gt;
16301
16302 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
16303 caching until &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;bug #485282&lt;/a&gt;
16304 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
16305 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
16306 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
16307 instructions I found in the
16308 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/&quot;&gt;LDAP for Mobile Laptops&lt;/a&gt;
16309 instructions by Flyn Computing.&lt;/p&gt;
16310
16311 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16312         debug-level             0
16313         reload-count            unlimited
16314         paranoia                no
16315
16316         enable-cache            passwd          yes
16317         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
16318         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
16319         suggested-size          passwd          211
16320         check-files             passwd          yes
16321         persistent              passwd          yes
16322         shared                  passwd          yes
16323         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
16324         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
16325
16326         enable-cache            group           yes
16327         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
16328         negative-time-to-live   group           20
16329         suggested-size          group           211
16330         check-files             group           yes
16331         persistent              group           yes
16332         shared                  group           yes
16333         max-db-size             group           33554432
16334         auto-propagate          group           yes
16335
16336         enable-cache            hosts           no
16337         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
16338         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
16339         suggested-size          hosts           211
16340         check-files             hosts           yes
16341         persistent              hosts           yes
16342         shared                  hosts           yes
16343         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
16344
16345         enable-cache            services        yes
16346         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
16347         negative-time-to-live   services        20
16348         suggested-size          services        211
16349         check-files             services        yes
16350         persistent              services        yes
16351         shared                  services        yes
16352         max-db-size             services        33554432
16353 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16354
16355 &lt;p&gt;While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
16356 automatically like the one provided in
16357 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/496915&quot;&gt;bug #496915&lt;/a&gt;, the file
16358 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
16359 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
16360 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
16361
16362 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16363 passwd:         files ldap
16364 group:          files ldap
16365 shadow:         files ldap
16366 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
16367 networks:       files
16368 protocols:      files
16369 services:       files
16370 ethers:         files
16371 rpc:            files
16372 netgroup:       files ldap
16373 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16374
16375 &lt;p&gt;The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
16376 shadow and netgroup.&lt;/p&gt;
16377
16378 &lt;p&gt;With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
16379 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
16380 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
16381 attributes cached.
16382
16383 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
16384   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
16385
16386 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
16387 problems doing proper caching, I&#39;ve seen suggestions and recipes to
16388 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
16389 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
16390 discovered sssd.&lt;/p&gt;
16391
16392 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/h2&gt;
16393
16394 &lt;p&gt;A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
16395 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
16396 &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package from Redhat.
16397 It is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeipa.org/&quot;&gt;FreeIPA&lt;/A&gt; project
16398 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
16399 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
16400 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
16401 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
16402 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
16403 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
16404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd package&lt;/a&gt;
16405 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
16406 version 1.2 is now in testing.
16407
16408 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
16409 roaming setup I want&lt;/p&gt;
16410
16411 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16412 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
16413 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16414
16415 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
16416 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/sssd/sssd.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.
16417
16418 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16419 [sssd]
16420 config_file_version = 2
16421 reconnection_retries = 3
16422 sbus_timeout = 30
16423 services = nss, pam
16424 domains = INTERN
16425
16426 [nss]
16427 filter_groups = root
16428 filter_users = root
16429 reconnection_retries = 3
16430
16431 [pam]
16432 reconnection_retries = 3
16433
16434 [domain/INTERN]
16435 enumerate = false
16436 cache_credentials = true
16437
16438 id_provider = ldap
16439 auth_provider = ldap
16440 chpass_provider = ldap
16441
16442 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
16443 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16444 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
16445 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
16446 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16447
16448 &lt;p&gt;I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
16449 &quot;ldap_tls_reqcert = never&quot; to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;
16450
16451 &lt;p&gt;With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
16452 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
16453 modify it manually.&lt;/p&gt;
16454
16455 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16456 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
16457 </description>
16458         </item>
16459
16460         <item>
16461                 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
16462                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
16463                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
16464                 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
16465                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
16466 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
16467 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
16468 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
16469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
16470 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
16471 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
16472 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
16473 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
16474 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
16475
16476 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
16477 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
16478 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
16479 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
16480 released.&lt;/p&gt;
16481
16482 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
16483 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
16484 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
16485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
16486
16487 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
16488 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
16489
16490 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
16491 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
16492 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
16493 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
16494 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
16495 </description>
16496         </item>
16497
16498         <item>
16499                 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
16500                 <link>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</link>
16501                 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
16502                 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
16503                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
16504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
16505 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
16506 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
16507 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
16508
16509 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
16510 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
16511 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
16512 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
16513
16514 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
16515 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
16516 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
16517 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
16518
16519 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
16520 the
16521 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
16522 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
16523 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
16524
16525 &lt;pre&gt;
16526 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
16527 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
16528 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
16529  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
16530         NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
16531         DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
16532 -       SUP top
16533 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
16534         MUST cn
16535         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
16536         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
16537 &lt;/pre&gt;
16538
16539 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
16540 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
16541 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
16542
16543 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16544 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
16545 </description>
16546         </item>
16547
16548         <item>
16549                 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
16550                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
16551                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
16552                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
16553                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
16554 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
16555 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
16556 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
16557 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
16558 this:
16559
16560 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16561 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16562 tasksel --new-install
16563 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16564
16565 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
16566 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
16567 any output what so ever.
16568
16569 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
16570 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
16571 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
16572 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
16573 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
16574 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
16575 code like this:
16576
16577 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16578 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16579 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
16580 $cmd
16581 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16582
16583 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
16584 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
16585 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
16586 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
16587 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
16588 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
16589 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
16590
16591 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
16592 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
16593 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
16594 </description>
16595         </item>
16596
16597         <item>
16598                 <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
16599                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
16600                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
16601                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
16602                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
16603 interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
16604 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
16605 &lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
16606 pages.&lt;/p&gt;
16607
16608 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
16609 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
16610 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
16611 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
16612 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
16613 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
16614 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
16615 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
16616 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
16617 see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;
16618
16619 &lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
16620 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
16621 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
16622 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
16623 Windows.  This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
16624 </description>
16625         </item>
16626
16627         <item>
16628                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
16629                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
16630                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
16631                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
16632                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
16633 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
16634 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
16635 finally made the upgrade logs available from
16636 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
16637 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
16638 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
16639 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
16640
16641 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
16642 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
16643 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
16644 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
16645 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
16646 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
16647 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
16648 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
16649
16650 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
16651 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
16652 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
16653 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
16654
16655 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
16656 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
16657 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
16658 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
16659 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
16660 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
16661 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
16662 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
16663
16664 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
16665 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
16666   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
16667   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
16668   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
16669   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
16670   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
16671   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16672   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16673   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16674   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16675   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16676   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16677   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16678   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16679   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16680   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16681   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16682   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16683   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16684   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16685   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16686   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16687   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16688   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16689   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16690   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16691   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16692   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
16693   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
16694
16695 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
16696
16697 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
16698   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
16699   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
16700   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
16701   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16702   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
16703   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
16704   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
16705   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
16706   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
16707   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
16708   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
16709   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
16710   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
16711   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
16712   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
16713   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
16714   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
16715   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
16716   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
16717   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
16718   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
16719   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
16720   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
16721   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
16722   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
16723   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
16724   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
16725   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
16726   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16727   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16728   zip&lt;/p&gt;
16729
16730 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
16731
16732 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
16733   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
16734   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
16735   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
16736   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
16737   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
16738   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
16739   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
16740   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
16741   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
16742   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
16743   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
16744   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
16745   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
16746   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16747   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
16748   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
16749   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
16750   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
16751   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
16752   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
16753   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
16754   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
16755   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
16756   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
16757   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
16758   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
16759   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
16760
16761 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
16762 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
16763   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16764   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
16765   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
16766   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16767   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
16768   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
16769   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16770   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
16771   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
16772   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
16773   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
16774   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
16775   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
16776   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
16777   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
16778   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16779   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16780   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
16781   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
16782   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16783   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
16784   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
16785   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16786   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16787   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
16788   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
16789   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
16790   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
16791   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
16792   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
16793   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
16794   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
16795   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
16796   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
16797   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
16798   xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
16799
16800 </description>
16801         </item>
16802
16803         <item>
16804                 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
16805                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
16806                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
16807                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
16808                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16809 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
16810 have been discovered and reported in the process
16811 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
16812 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
16813 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
16814 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16815 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
16816
16817 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16818 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16819 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16820 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16821 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16822 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
16823
16824 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16825 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16826 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16827 is created.  The bug report
16828 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
16829 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16830 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
16831 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16832 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
16833 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
16834 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16835 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16836 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
16837 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16838 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16839 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16840 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
16841
16842 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
16843 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
16844 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
16845
16846 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16847 #!/bin/sh
16848 set -ex
16849
16850 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
16851     desktop=$1
16852 else
16853     desktop=gnome
16854 fi
16855
16856 from=lenny
16857 to=squeeze
16858
16859 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
16860 unset LANG
16861 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16862 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16863 fuser -mv .
16864 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16865 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16866 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
16867 #!/bin/sh
16868 exit 101
16869 EOF
16870 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16871 exit_cleanup() {
16872     umount $tmpdir/proc
16873 }
16874 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16875 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16876 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16877
16878 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16879
16880 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
16881 # to return the correct answers.
16882 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16883     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16884
16885 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16886 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16887     echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
16888 #!/bin/sh
16889 exit 2
16890 EOF
16891     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16892 done
16893
16894 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16895 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16896 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16897 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16898
16899 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16900 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16901 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16902 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16903 fuser -mv
16904 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16905
16906 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16907 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16908 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16909 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
16910 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16911 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
16912
16913 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16914 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16915 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
16916 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
16917 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16918 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
16919 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
16920
16921 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16922 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16923 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16924 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16925 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16926 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
16927 </description>
16928         </item>
16929
16930         <item>
16931                 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
16932                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
16933                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
16934                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
16935                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16936 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16937 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
16938 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16939 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
16940 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16941 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
16942
16943 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16944 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16945 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
16946
16947 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16948 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
16949 previous=N
16950 PREVLEVEL=
16951 RUNLEVEL=
16952 runlevel=S
16953 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16954 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
16955 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16956 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16957
16958 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16959 script.&lt;/p&gt;
16960
16961 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
16962 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
16963 previous=N
16964 PREVLEVEL=N
16965 RUNLEVEL=S
16966 runlevel=S
16967 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
16968
16969 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16970 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
16971 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
16972
16973 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16974 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16975 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
16976 </description>
16977         </item>
16978
16979         <item>
16980                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
16981                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
16982                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
16983                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
16984                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
16985 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
16986 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
16987 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
16988 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
16989 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
16990 </description>
16991         </item>
16992
16993         <item>
16994                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
16995                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
16996                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
16997                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
16998                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16999 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
17000 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
17001 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
17002 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
17003
17004 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17005 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
17006   vendor                    count
17007   Dell Computer Corporation     1
17008     PowerEdge 1750              1
17009   IBM                           1
17010     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
17011   Intel                         2
17012   [no-dmi-info]                 3
17013 maintainer:~#
17014 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17015
17016 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
17017 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
17018 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
17019 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
17020 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
17021
17022 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
17023 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
17024 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
17025 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
17026 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
17027 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
17028 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
17029 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
17030 </description>
17031         </item>
17032
17033         <item>
17034                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
17035                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
17036                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
17037                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
17038                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
17039 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
17040 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
17041 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
17042 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
17043
17044 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
17045 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
17046 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
17047 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
17048 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
17049 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
17050
17051 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
17052 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
17053 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
17054 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
17055 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
17056 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
17057 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
17058 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
17059
17060 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
17061 </description>
17062         </item>
17063
17064         <item>
17065                 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
17066                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
17067                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
17068                 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
17069                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
17070 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
17071 issues are known and should be solved:
17072
17073 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
17074
17075 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
17076 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
17077 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
17078 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
17079 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
17080
17081 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
17082 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
17083 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
17084 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
17085
17086 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
17087 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
17088 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
17089 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
17090 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
17091 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
17092 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
17093 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
17094
17095 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
17096
17097 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
17098 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
17099 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
17100 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
17101
17102 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17103 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
17105 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
17106
17107 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
17108 </description>
17109         </item>
17110
17111         <item>
17112                 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
17113                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
17114                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
17115                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
17116                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
17117 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
17118 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
17119 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
17120
17121 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
17122 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
17123 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
17124 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
17125 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
17126 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
17127 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
17128 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
17129 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
17130 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
17131 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
17132 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
17133 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
17134 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
17135
17136 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
17137 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
17138 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
17139 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
17140 &quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
17141 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
17142 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
17143 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
17144 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
17145 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
17146 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
17147
17148 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
17149 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
17150 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
17151 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
17152 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
17153 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
17154
17155 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
17156 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
17157 </description>
17158         </item>
17159
17160         <item>
17161                 <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
17162                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
17163                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
17164                 <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
17165                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
17166 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
17167 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html&quot;&gt;libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/a&gt;
17168 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
17169 into unstable.  The
17170 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html&quot;&gt;pam-python&lt;/a&gt;
17171 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
17172 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package
17173 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
17174 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
17175 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
17176 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.&lt;/p&gt;
17177
17178 &lt;p&gt;This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
17179 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
17180 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
17181 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
17182 for nscd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;BTS report
17183 #485282&lt;/a&gt; is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
17184 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
17185 care of the caching of passwords and group information.&lt;/p&gt;
17186
17187 &lt;p&gt;I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
17188 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
17189 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
17190 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
17191 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
17192 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
17193 and I am sure we will find a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;
17194
17195 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
17196 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
17197 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
17198 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
17199 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
17200 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
17201 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
17202 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
17203 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
17204 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
17205 on the home directory servers.&lt;/p&gt;
17206
17207 &lt;p&gt;One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
17208 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
17209 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
17210 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
17211 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
17212 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.&lt;/p&gt;
17213
17214 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17215 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
17216 </description>
17217         </item>
17218
17219         <item>
17220                 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
17221                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
17222                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
17223                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
17224                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
17225 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
17226 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
17227 expected, if I am to believe the
17228 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
17229 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
17230 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
17231 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
17232 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
17233 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
17234 version.&lt;/p&gt;
17235
17236 More information about
17237 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
17238 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
17239 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
17240 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
17241
17242 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17243 CONCURRENCY=none
17244 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17245
17246 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17247 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17248 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
17249 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
17250 </description>
17251         </item>
17252
17253         <item>
17254                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
17255                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
17256                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
17257                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
17258                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
17259 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
17260 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
17261 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
17262 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
17263 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
17264 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
17265 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
17266
17267 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
17268 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
17269 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
17270
17271 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17272 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
17273 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17274
17275 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
17276 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
17277
17278 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
17279 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
17280 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
17281 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
17282 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
17283 </description>
17284         </item>
17285
17286         <item>
17287                 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
17288                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
17289                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
17290                 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
17291                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
17292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
17293 has been
17294 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
17295
17296 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
17297 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
17298 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
17299 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
17300 based boot system.  Tollef is
17301 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
17302 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
17303 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
17304 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
17305 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
17306
17307 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
17308 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
17309 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
17310 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
17311 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
17312 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
17313
17314 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
17315 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
17316 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
17317 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
17318 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
17319 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
17320 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
17321 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
17322 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
17323 </description>
17324         </item>
17325
17326         <item>
17327                 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
17328                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
17329                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
17330                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
17331                 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
17332 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
17333 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
17334 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
17335 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
17336 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
17337 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
17338
17339 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17340 CONCURRENCY=makefile
17341 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17342
17343 &lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
17344 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
17345 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
17346 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
17347 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
17348 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
17349 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
17350
17351 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
17352 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
17353 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
17354 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
17355 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
17356
17357 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
17358 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
17359 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
17360 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
17361
17362 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
17363 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
17364 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
17365 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
17366 </description>
17367         </item>
17368
17369         <item>
17370                 <title>Forcing new users to change their password on first login</title>
17371                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</link>
17372                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</guid>
17373                 <pubDate>Sun, 2 May 2010 13:47:00 +0200</pubDate>
17374                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
17375 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
17376 change the password on the first login attempt.&lt;/p&gt;
17377
17378 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
17379 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
17380 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
17381 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
17382 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.&lt;/p&gt;
17383
17384 &lt;p&gt;A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
17385 settings in /etc/shadow:&lt;/p&gt;
17386
17387 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17388 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17389 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
17390 Password expires                                        : never
17391 Password inactive                                       : never
17392 Account expires                                         : never
17393 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17394 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
17395 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17396 root@tjener:~#
17397 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17398
17399 &lt;p&gt;The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
17400 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
17401 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
17402 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
17403 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
17404 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).&lt;/p&gt;
17405
17406 &lt;p&gt;After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
17407 intended:&lt;/p&gt;
17408
17409 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
17410 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
17411 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
17412 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
17413 Password expires                                        : never
17414 Password inactive                                       : never
17415 Account expires                                         : never
17416 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
17417 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
17418 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
17419 root@tjener:~#
17420 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17421
17422 &lt;p&gt;So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
17423 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
17424 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).&lt;/p&gt;
17425
17426 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
17427 sure only the user itself have the account password?&lt;/p&gt;
17428
17429 &lt;p&gt;If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
17430 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
17431
17432 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
17433 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
17434 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
17435 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
17436 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
17437 Squeeze, and &#39;&lt;tt&gt;chage -d 0 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; do work there.  I have not
17438 tested it on Lenny yet.&lt;/p&gt;
17439
17440 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
17441 equivalent command to expire a password is &#39;&lt;tt&gt;passwd -e
17442 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;, which insert zero into the date of the last password
17443 change.&lt;/p&gt;
17444 </description>
17445         </item>
17446
17447         <item>
17448                 <title>Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</title>
17449                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
17450                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
17451                 <pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
17452                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
17453 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
17454 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
17455 and go.&lt;/p&gt;
17456
17457 &lt;p&gt;Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
17458 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
17459 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
17460 The setup would consist of the following:&lt;/p&gt;
17461
17462 &lt;ul&gt;
17463
17464  &lt;li&gt;During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
17465    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
17466    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
17467    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
17468    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
17469    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
17470    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
17471    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
17472    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
17473    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
17474    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
17475    the fish protocol in KDE?&lt;/li&gt;
17476
17477  &lt;li&gt;Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
17478    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
17479    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
17480    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
17481    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
17482    or the Fedora developed
17483    &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD&quot;&gt;System
17484    Security Services Daemon&lt;/a&gt; packages.&lt;/li&gt;
17485
17486  &lt;li&gt;File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
17487    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
17488    directory, using unison.&lt;/li&gt;
17489
17490  &lt;li&gt;Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
17491    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
17492    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
17493    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
17494    implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
17495
17496  &lt;li&gt;For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
17497    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.&lt;/li&gt;
17498
17499  &lt;li&gt;It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
17500    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
17501    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.&lt;/li&gt;
17502
17503 &lt;/ul&gt;
17504
17505 &lt;p&gt;I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
17506 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
17507 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
17508 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
17509 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566718&quot;&gt;#566718&lt;/a&gt;) and nslcd (or
17510 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
17511 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
17512 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
17513 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.&lt;/p&gt;
17514
17515 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17516 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
17517 </description>
17518         </item>
17519
17520         <item>
17521                 <title>Great book: &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot;</title>
17522                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</link>
17523                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</guid>
17524                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
17525                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
17526 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
17527 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
17528 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
17529 book titled &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
17530 Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot; is available with few
17531 restrictions on the web, for example from
17532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://craphound.com/content/&quot;&gt;his own site&lt;/a&gt;. I read the
17533 epub-version from
17534 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883&quot;&gt;feedbooks&lt;/a&gt; using
17535 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbreader.org/&quot;&gt;fbreader&lt;/a&gt; and my N810. I
17536 strongly recommend this book.&lt;/p&gt;
17537 </description>
17538         </item>
17539
17540         <item>
17541                 <title>Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</title>
17542                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</link>
17543                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</guid>
17544                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
17545                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/&quot;&gt;Yesterdays
17546 NUUG presentation&lt;/a&gt; about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
17547 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
17548 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
17549 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
17550 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
17551 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
17552 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
17553 users and cryptographic keys instead.&lt;/p&gt;
17554
17555 &lt;p&gt;A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
17556 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
17557 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
17558 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
17559 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.&lt;/p&gt;
17560
17561 &lt;p&gt;A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
17562 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;
17563
17564 &lt;p&gt;Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
17565 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
17566 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
17567 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
17568 to work properly.&lt;/p&gt;
17569
17570 &lt;p&gt;I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
17571 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
17572 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
17573 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
17574 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
17575 time.&lt;/p&gt;
17576
17577 &lt;p&gt;If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
17578 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
17579 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
17580 up in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
17581 </description>
17582         </item>
17583
17584         <item>
17585                 <title>After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</title>
17586                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</link>
17587                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</guid>
17588                 <pubDate>Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
17589                 <description>&lt;p&gt;6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
17590 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
17591 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
17592 package in 2004 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/230422&quot;&gt;#230422&lt;/a&gt;),
17593 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
17594 Today, this finally paid off.&lt;/p&gt;
17595
17596 &lt;p&gt;The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
17597 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
17598 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
17599 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.&lt;/p&gt;
17600
17601 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
17602 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
17603 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
17604 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
17605 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
17606 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.&lt;p&gt;
17607 </description>
17608         </item>
17609
17610         <item>
17611                 <title>Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</title>
17612                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</link>
17613                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</guid>
17614                 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
17615                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
17616 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was finally
17617 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
17618 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
17619 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
17620 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
17621 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;
17622
17623 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps it even is time for some partying?&lt;/p&gt;
17624
17625 &lt;p&gt;After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
17626 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
17627 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
17628 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;
17629 </description>
17630         </item>
17631
17632         <item>
17633                 <title>Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</title>
17634                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</link>
17635                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</guid>
17636                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
17637                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
17638 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
17639 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
17640 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
17641 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
17642 further.&lt;/p&gt;
17643
17644 &lt;p&gt;When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
17645 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
17646 configured to be a server for the
17647 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;SiteSummary
17648 system&lt;/a&gt; I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
17649 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
17650 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
17651 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
17652 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
17653 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
17654 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
17655 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
17656 and Nagios configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
17657
17658 &lt;p&gt;All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
17659 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
17660 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
17661 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.&lt;/p&gt;
17662
17663 &lt;p&gt;All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
17664 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
17665 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
17666 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
17667 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
17668 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
17669 the machine.&lt;/p&gt;
17670
17671 &lt;p&gt;The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
17672 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
17673 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
17674 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;
17675
17676 &lt;p&gt;The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
17677 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
17678 administrator need to run &quot;&lt;tt&gt;htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
17679 nagiosadmin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
17680 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
17681 everything is taken care of.&lt;/p&gt;
17682 </description>
17683         </item>
17684
17685         <item>
17686                 <title>Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</title>
17687                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</link>
17688                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</guid>
17689                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
17690                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
17691 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
17692 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
17693 &#39;filetype:odt&#39; and equvalent terms, and got these results:&lt;/P&gt;
17694
17695 &lt;table&gt;
17696 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17697 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:282000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17698 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:75600&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:183000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17699 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:145000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17700 &lt;/table&gt;
17701
17702 &lt;p&gt;Next, I added a &#39;site:no&#39; limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
17703 got these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;
17704
17705 &lt;table&gt;
17706 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17707 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:4460&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17708 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:299   &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:741&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17709 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:187       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:372&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17710 &lt;/table&gt;
17711
17712 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how these numbers change over time.&lt;/p&gt;
17713
17714 &lt;p&gt;I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
17715 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
17716 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
17717 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
17718 search done from a machine here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
17719
17720
17721 &lt;table&gt;
17722 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17723 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:129000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17724 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:44200&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:93900&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17725 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:82400&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17726 &lt;/table&gt;
17727
17728 &lt;p&gt;And with &#39;site:no&#39;:
17729
17730 &lt;table&gt;
17731 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17732 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:3410&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17733 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:175&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:604&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17734 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:186       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:296&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
17735 &lt;/table&gt;
17736
17737 &lt;p&gt;Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
17738 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;
17739 </description>
17740         </item>
17741
17742         <item>
17743                 <title>ISO still hope to fix OOXML</title>
17744                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</link>
17745                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</guid>
17746                 <pubDate>Sat, 8 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
17747                 <description>&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a
17748 href=&quot;http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html&quot;&gt;a
17749 blog post from Torsten Werner&lt;/a&gt;, the current defect report for ISO
17750 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
17751 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
17752 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
17753 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
17754 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
17755 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
17756 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
17757 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.&lt;/p&gt;
17758
17759 &lt;p&gt;These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
17760 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
17761 seminar this autumn.&lt;/p&gt;
17762 </description>
17763         </item>
17764
17765         <item>
17766                 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
17767                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
17768                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
17769                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
17770                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
17771 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
17772 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
17773 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
17774 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
17775 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
17776 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
17777
17778 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
17779 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
17780 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
17781 </description>
17782         </item>
17783
17784         <item>
17785                 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
17786                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
17787                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
17788                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
17789                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
17790 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
17791 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
17792 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
17793 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
17794 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
17795
17796 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
17797 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
17798 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
17799 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
17800 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
17801 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
17802 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
17803 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
17804 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
17805 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
17806 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
17807 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
17808
17809 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
17810 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
17811 </description>
17812         </item>
17813
17814         <item>
17815                 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
17816                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
17817                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
17818                 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
17819                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
17820 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
17821 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
17822 funded
17823 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
17824 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
17825 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
17826 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
17827 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
17828 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
17829
17830 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
17831 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
17832 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
17833
17834 &lt;ul&gt;
17835
17836 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
17837
17838 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
17839    clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
17840
17841 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
17842    &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
17843    based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
17844
17845 &lt;/ul&gt;
17846
17847 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
17848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
17849 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
17850
17851 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
17852 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
17853 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
17854 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
17855 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
17856 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
17857
17858 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
17859 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
17860 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
17861 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
17862 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
17863 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
17864 insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
17865 </description>
17866         </item>
17867
17868         <item>
17869                 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
17870                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
17871                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
17872                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
17873                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
17874 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
17875 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
17876
17877 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
17878 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
17879 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
17880 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
17881 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
17882 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
17883 occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
17884 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
17885 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
17886 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
17887 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
17888
17889 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
17890 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
17891 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
17892 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
17893 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
17894 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
17895 and the company behind it is running
17896 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
17897 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
17898 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
17899 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
17900 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
17901 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
17902 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
17903 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
17904
17905 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
17906 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
17907 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
17908 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
17909 </description>
17910         </item>
17911
17912         <item>
17913                 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
17914                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
17915                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
17916                 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
17917                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
17918 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
17919 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
17920 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17921 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17922 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
17923 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
17924 </description>
17925         </item>
17926
17927         <item>
17928                 <title>Recording video from cron using VLC</title>
17929                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</link>
17930                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</guid>
17931                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
17932                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
17933 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
17934 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
17935 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
17936 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
17937 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
17938 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
17939 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:&lt;/p&gt;
17940
17941 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
17942 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
17943 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
17944   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
17945   --intf=dummy&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17946
17947 &lt;p&gt;The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
17948 duplicating the output stream to &quot;nodisplay&quot; and the file, using the
17949 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
17950 sure no X interface is needed.&lt;/p&gt;
17951
17952 &lt;p&gt;The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
17953 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
17954 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
17955 &lt;tt&gt;vlc-record&lt;/tt&gt; to use from &lt;tt&gt;at&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;cron&lt;/tt&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
17956
17957 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;#!/bin/sh
17958 set -e
17959 URL=&quot;$1&quot;
17960 SAVEFILE=&quot;$2&quot;
17961 DURATION=&quot;$3&quot;
17962 DISPLAY= vlc -q &quot;$URL&quot; \
17963   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
17964   --intf=dummy &lt; /dev/null &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
17965 pid=$!
17966 sleep $DURATION
17967 kill $pid
17968 wait $pid&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
17969 </description>
17970         </item>
17971
17972         <item>
17973                 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
17974                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
17975                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
17976                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
17977                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17978 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
17979 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17980 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17981 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17982 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17983 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17984 application.&lt;/p&gt;
17985
17986 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17987 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
17988 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17989 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
17990 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17991 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17992 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
17993
17994 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17995 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17996 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17997 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
17998
17999 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
18000 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
18001 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
18002 </description>
18003         </item>
18004
18005         <item>
18006                 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
18007                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
18008                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
18009                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
18010                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
18011 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
18012 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
18013 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
18014 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
18015 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
18016 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
18017 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
18018 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
18019 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
18020 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
18021 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
18022 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
18023 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
18024 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
18025 </description>
18026         </item>
18027
18028         <item>
18029                 <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
18030                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
18031                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
18032                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
18033                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
18034 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
18035 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
18036 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
18037 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
18038 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
18039
18040 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
18041 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
18042 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
18043 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
18044 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
18045 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
18046 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
18047 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
18048 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
18049 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
18050 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
18051 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
18052 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
18053
18054 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
18055 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
18056 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
18057 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
18058
18059 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
18060 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
18061
18062 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
18063 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
18064 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
18065 </description>
18066         </item>
18067
18068         <item>
18069                 <title>Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</title>
18070                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</link>
18071                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</guid>
18072                 <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
18073                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
18074 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
18075 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
18076 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
18077 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
18078 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
18079 status, I&#39;ve recently spent time on extending the machine register to
18080 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
18081 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
18082 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
18083 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
18084 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
18085 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
18086 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
18087 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
18088 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
18089 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
18090 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
18091 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
18092 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
18093 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
18094 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
18095 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
18096 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
18097 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
18098 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
18099
18100 &lt;p&gt;I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
18101 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
18102 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
18103 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
18104 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
18105 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
18106 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:&lt;/p&gt;
18107
18108 &lt;pre&gt;
18109 use LWP::Simple;
18110 use POSIX;
18111 use WWW::Mechanize;
18112 use Date::Parse;
18113 [...]
18114 sub get_support_info {
18115     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
18116     my $str;
18117
18118     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
18119         # fetch website from Dell support
18120         my $url = &quot;http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;amp;l=no&amp;amp;s=dhs&amp;amp;ServiceTag=$serial&quot;;
18121         my $webpage = get($url);
18122         return undef unless ($webpage);
18123
18124         my $daysleft = -1;
18125         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
18126         foreach my $line (@lines) {
18127             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
18128             $line =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
18129             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
18130
18131             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
18132             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
18133             my $lastend = &quot;&quot;;
18134             while ($f[3] eq &quot;DELL&quot;) {
18135                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
18136
18137                 my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
18138                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18139                 my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
18140                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
18141                 $str .= &quot;$type $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
18142                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
18143                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
18144             }
18145             my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
18146             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18147                 if ($lastend lt $today);
18148         }
18149     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
18150         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-&gt;new();
18151         my $url =
18152             &#39;http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do&#39;;
18153         $mech-&gt;get($url);
18154         my $fields = {
18155             &#39;BODServiceID&#39; =&gt; &#39;NA&#39;,
18156             &#39;RegisteredPurchaseDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
18157             &#39;country&#39; =&gt; &#39;NO&#39;,
18158             &#39;productNumber&#39; =&gt; $productnumber,
18159             &#39;serialNumber1&#39; =&gt; $serial,
18160         };
18161         $mech-&gt;submit_form( form_number =&gt; 2,
18162                             fields      =&gt; $fields );
18163         # Next step is screen scraping
18164         my $content = $mech-&gt;content();
18165
18166         $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
18167         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18168         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18169         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18170
18171         my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
18172
18173         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
18174             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
18175                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
18176             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
18177             my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
18178                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
18179             my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
18180                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
18181
18182             $str .= &quot;$type ($status) $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
18183
18184             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18185                 if ($end lt $today);
18186         }
18187     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
18188         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
18189         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
18190         if ($producttype &amp;amp;&amp;amp; $serial) {
18191             my $content =
18192                 get(&quot;http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;amp;brandind=5000008&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&amp;amp;type=$producttype&amp;amp;serial=$serial&quot;);
18193             if ($content) {
18194                 $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
18195                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
18196                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
18197                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
18198
18199                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
18200                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
18201
18202                 $str .= &quot;($status) -&gt; $end &quot;;
18203
18204                 my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
18205                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
18206                     if ($end lt $today);
18207             }
18208         }
18209     }
18210     return $str;
18211 }
18212 &lt;/pre&gt;
18213
18214 &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
18215 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
18216 from dmidecode.&lt;/p&gt;
18217
18218 &lt;pre&gt;
18219 print get_support_info(&quot;hp.host&quot;, &quot;HP ProLiant BL460c G1&quot;, &quot;1234567890&quot;
18220                        &quot;447707-B21&quot;);
18221 print get_support_info(&quot;dell.host&quot;, &quot;Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950&quot;, &quot;1234567&quot;);
18222 print get_support_info(&quot;ibm.host&quot;, &quot;IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-&quot;,
18223                        &quot;1234567&quot;);
18224 &lt;/pre&gt;
18225
18226 &lt;p&gt;I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
18227 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)&lt;/p&gt;
18228
18229 &lt;p&gt;Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
18230 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
18231 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
18232 do so.&lt;/p&gt;
18233 </description>
18234         </item>
18235
18236         <item>
18237                 <title>Using bar codes at a computing center</title>
18238                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</link>
18239                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</guid>
18240                 <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
18241                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
18242 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
18243 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
18244 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
18245 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
18246 the &quot;missing&quot; computer.&lt;/p&gt;
18247
18248 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
18249 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libdmtx.org/&quot;&gt;libdmtx&lt;/a&gt; to write and read bar
18250 code blocks as defined in the
18251 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix&quot;&gt;The Data Matrix
18252 Standard&lt;/a&gt;.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
18253 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
18254 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
18255 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
18256 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/&quot;&gt;a bar code
18257 writer written in postscript&lt;/a&gt; capable of creating such bar codes,
18258 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
18259 codes.&lt;/p&gt;
18260
18261 &lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
18262 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
18263 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
18264 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
18265 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
18266 locations, and can detect movements and removals.&lt;/p&gt;
18267
18268 &lt;p&gt;I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
18269 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
18270 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
18271 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
18272 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
18273 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
18274 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
18275 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
18276 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
18277 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.&lt;/p&gt;
18278
18279 &lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
18280 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
18281 easier automatic tracking of computers.&lt;/p&gt;
18282 </description>
18283         </item>
18284
18285         <item>
18286                 <title>When web browser developers make a video player...</title>
18287                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</link>
18288                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</guid>
18289                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
18290                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of the work we do in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;
18291 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
18292 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
18293 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
18294 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
18295 will become easier when the &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag is implemented in all
18296 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
18297 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
18298 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
18299 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
18300 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
18301 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;object&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;embed&amp;gt; tag and
18302 the &amp;lt;applet&amp;gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
18303 finding the best options is a major challenge.&lt;/p&gt;
18304
18305 &lt;p&gt;I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from &lt;a
18306 href=&quot;http://labs.opera.com&quot;&gt;labs.opera.com&lt;/a&gt;, to see how it handled
18307 a &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
18308 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
18309 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
18310 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
18311 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
18312 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
18313 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
18314 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
18315 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
18316 discover that I have to add the controls=&quot;true&quot; attribute to be able
18317 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
18318 autoplay=&quot;true&quot; did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
18319 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
18320 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
18321 playing when the download is done.&lt;/p&gt;
18322
18323 &lt;p&gt;The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
18324 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/&quot;&gt;available
18325 from the nuug site&lt;/a&gt;.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
18326 too.&lt;/p&gt;
18327
18328 &lt;p&gt;In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
18329 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
18330 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
18331 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)&lt;/p&gt;
18332 </description>
18333         </item>
18334
18335         <item>
18336                 <title>Software video mixer on a USB stick</title>
18337                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</link>
18338                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</guid>
18339                 <pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
18340                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; is
18341 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
18342 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
18343 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
18344 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt; package from
18345 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
18346 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
18347 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
18348 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
18349 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
18350 source, sink and mixer applications and
18351 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinodv.org/&quot;&gt;dvgrab&lt;/a&gt;.  To allow this setup to
18352 work without any configuration, I&#39;ve patched dvswitch to use
18353 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avahi.org/&quot;&gt;avahi&lt;/a&gt; to connect the various parts
18354 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
18355 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
18356 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
18357 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
18358 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
18359 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/&quot;&gt;Go Open 2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
18360
18361 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz&quot;&gt;The
18362 USB image&lt;/a&gt; is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
18363 larger stick as well.&lt;/p&gt;
18364 </description>
18365         </item>
18366
18367         <item>
18368                 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
18369                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
18370                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
18371                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
18372                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
18373 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
18374 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
18375 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
18376 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
18377 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
18378 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
18379 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
18380
18381 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
18382 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
18383 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
18384 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
18385 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
18386 </description>
18387         </item>
18388
18389         <item>
18390                 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
18391                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
18392                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
18393                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
18394                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
18395 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
18396 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
18397 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
18398 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
18399 notes are available on
18400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
18401 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
18402 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
18403 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
18404 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
18405 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
18406 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
18407 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
18408 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
18409
18410 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
18411 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
18412 </description>
18413         </item>
18414
18415         </channel>
18416 </rss>