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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th November 2008
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
  32 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
  33 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
  34 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
  35 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
  36 notes are available on
  37 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
  38 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
  39 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
  40 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
  41 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
  42 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
  43 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
  44 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
  45 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
  46
  47 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
  48 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
  49
  50       </div>
  51       <div class="tags">
  52
  53
  54         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
  55
  56
  57       </div>
  58     </div>
  59     <div class="padding"></div>
  60
  61     <div class="entry">
  62       <div class="title">
  63         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
  64       </div>
  65       <div class="date">
  66          7th December 2008
  67       </div>
  68       <div class="body">
  69         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
  70 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
  71 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
  72 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
  73 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
  74 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
  75 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
  76 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
  77
  78 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
  79 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
  80 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
  81 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
  82 of these cards.</p>
  83
  84       </div>
  85       <div class="tags">
  86
  87
  88         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
  89
  90
  91       </div>
  92     </div>
  93     <div class="padding"></div>
  94
  95     <div class="entry">
  96       <div class="title">
  97         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
  98       </div>
  99       <div class="date">
 100         15th February 2009
 101       </div>
 102       <div class="body">
 103         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
 104 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
 105 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
 106 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
 107 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
 108 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
 109 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
 110 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
 111 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
 112 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
 113 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
 114 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
 115
 116       </div>
 117       <div class="tags">
 118
 119
 120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
 121
 122
 123       </div>
 124     </div>
 125     <div class="padding"></div>
 126
 127     <div class="entry">
 128       <div class="title">
 129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
 130       </div>
 131       <div class="date">
 132         29th March 2009
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="body">
 135         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
 136 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
 137 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
 138 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
 139 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
 140 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
 141
 142 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
 143 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
 144 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
 145 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
 146 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
 147 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
 148 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
 149 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
 150 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
 151 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
 152 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
 153 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
 154 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
 155
 156 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
 157 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
 158 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
 159 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
 160
 161 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
 162 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
 163
 164 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
 165 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
 166 new IETF work group?</p>
 167
 168       </div>
 169       <div class="tags">
 170
 171
 172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 173
 174
 175       </div>
 176     </div>
 177     <div class="padding"></div>
 178
 179     <div class="entry">
 180       <div class="title">
 181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
 182       </div>
 183       <div class="date">
 184         29th March 2009
 185       </div>
 186       <div class="body">
 187         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
 188 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
 189 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
 190 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
 191 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
 192 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
 193 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
 194 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
 195 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
 196 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
 197 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
 198 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
 199 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
 200 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
 201 now. :)</p>
 202
 203       </div>
 204       <div class="tags">
 205
 206
 207         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 208
 209
 210       </div>
 211     </div>
 212     <div class="padding"></div>
 213
 214     <div class="entry">
 215       <div class="title">
 216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
 217       </div>
 218       <div class="date">
 219         30th March 2009
 220       </div>
 221       <div class="body">
 222         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
 223 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
 224 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
 225 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
 226 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
 227 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
 228 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
 229 application.</p>
 230
 231 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
 232 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
 233 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
 234 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
 235 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
 236 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
 237 blocked from doing so.</p>
 238
 239 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
 240 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
 241 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
 242 requirements change.</p>
 243
 244 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
 245 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
 246 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
 247
 248       </div>
 249       <div class="tags">
 250
 251
 252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 253
 254
 255       </div>
 256     </div>
 257     <div class="padding"></div>
 258
 259     <div class="entry">
 260       <div class="title">
 261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
 262       </div>
 263       <div class="date">
 264         28th April 2009
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="body">
 267         <p>Julien Blache
 268 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
 269 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
 270 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
 271 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
 272 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
 273 properties.</p>
 274
 275       </div>
 276       <div class="tags">
 277
 278
 279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 280
 281
 282       </div>
 283     </div>
 284     <div class="padding"></div>
 285
 286     <div class="entry">
 287       <div class="title">
 288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
 289       </div>
 290       <div class="date">
 291          2nd May 2009
 292       </div>
 293       <div class="body">
 294         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
 295 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
 296 do not yet know them.</p>
 297
 298 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
 299 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
 300 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
 301 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
 302 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
 303 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
 304 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
 305 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
 306 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
 307 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
 308 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
 309
 310 <p>The second one is
 311 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
 312 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
 313 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
 314 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
 315 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
 316 and the company behind it is running
 317 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
 318 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
 319 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
 320 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
 321 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
 322 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
 323 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
 324 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
 325
 326 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
 327 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
 328 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
 329 surrounded by today.</p>
 330
 331       </div>
 332       <div class="tags">
 333
 334
 335         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 336
 337
 338       </div>
 339     </div>
 340     <div class="padding"></div>
 341
 342     <div class="entry">
 343       <div class="title">
 344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="date">
 347          2nd May 2009
 348       </div>
 349       <div class="body">
 350         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
 351 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
 352 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
 353 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
 354 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
 355 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
 356 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
 357 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
 358 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
 359 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
 360 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
 361 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
 362 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
 363 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
 364 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
 365 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
 366 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
 367 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
 368 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
 369 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
 370
 371 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
 372 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
 373 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
 374 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
 375 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
 376 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
 377 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
 378 betydelige.</p>
 379
 380       </div>
 381       <div class="tags">
 382
 383
 384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 385
 386
 387       </div>
 388     </div>
 389     <div class="padding"></div>
 390
 391     <div class="entry">
 392       <div class="title">
 393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
 394       </div>
 395       <div class="date">
 396          7th May 2009
 397       </div>
 398       <div class="body">
 399         <p>Kom over
 400 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
 401 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
 402 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
 403 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
 404 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
 405 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
 406 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
 407
 408       </div>
 409       <div class="tags">
 410
 411
 412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 413
 414
 415       </div>
 416     </div>
 417     <div class="padding"></div>
 418
 419     <div class="entry">
 420       <div class="title">
 421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
 422       </div>
 423       <div class="date">
 424         17th May 2009
 425       </div>
 426       <div class="body">
 427         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
 428 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
 429 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
 430 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
 431 dager siden kom
 432 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
 433 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
 434 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
 435 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
 436 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
 437
 438 <blockquote>
 439 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
 440 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
 441 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
 442 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
 443 </blockquote>
 444
 445 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
 446 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
 447 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
 448 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
 449 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
 450
 451 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
 452 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
 453 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
 454
 455       </div>
 456       <div class="tags">
 457
 458
 459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
 460
 461
 462       </div>
 463     </div>
 464     <div class="padding"></div>
 465
 466     <div class="entry">
 467       <div class="title">
 468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
 469       </div>
 470       <div class="date">
 471         24th June 2009
 472       </div>
 473       <div class="body">
 474         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
 475 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
 476 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
 477 funded
 478 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
 479 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
 480 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
 481 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
 482 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
 483 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
 484
 485 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
 486 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
 487 boot:</p>
 488
 489 <ul>
 490
 491 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
 492
 493 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
 494    clock is in UTC.</li>
 495
 496 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
 497    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 498    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
 499
 500 </ul>
 501
 502 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
 503 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
 504 Villegas</a>.
 505
 506 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
 507 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
 508 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
 509 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
 510 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
 511 using this.</p>
 512
 513 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
 514 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
 515 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
 516 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
 517 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
 518 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
 519 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
 520
 521       </div>
 522       <div class="tags">
 523
 524
 525         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 526
 527
 528       </div>
 529     </div>
 530     <div class="padding"></div>
 531
 532     <div class="entry">
 533       <div class="title">
 534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="date">
 537         22nd July 2009
 538       </div>
 539       <div class="body">
 540         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
 541 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
 542 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
 543 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
 544 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
 545 the package up to date.</p>
 546
 547 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
 548 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
 549 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
 550 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
 551 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
 552 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
 553 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
 554 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
 555 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
 556 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
 557 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
 558 working on the future release.</p>
 559
 560 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
 561 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
 562
 563       </div>
 564       <div class="tags">
 565
 566
 567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 568
 569
 570       </div>
 571     </div>
 572     <div class="padding"></div>
 573
 574     <div class="entry">
 575       <div class="title">
 576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
 577       </div>
 578       <div class="date">
 579         27th July 2009
 580       </div>
 581       <div class="body">
 582         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
 583 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
 584 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
 585 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
 586 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
 587 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
 588 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
 589
 590 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
 591 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
 592 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
 593
 594       </div>
 595       <div class="tags">
 596
 597
 598         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 599
 600
 601       </div>
 602     </div>
 603     <div class="padding"></div>
 604
 605     <div class="entry">
 606       <div class="title">
 607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
 608       </div>
 609       <div class="date">
 610          6th May 2010
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="body">
 613         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
 614 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
 615 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
 616 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
 617 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 618 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
 619 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 620
 621 <blockquote><pre>
 622 CONCURRENCY=makefile
 623 </pre></blockquote>
 624
 625 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
 626 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
 627 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
 628 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
 629 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
 630 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
 631 make this happen.</p>
 632
 633 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
 634 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
 635 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
 636 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
 637 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
 638
 639 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
 640 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
 641 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
 642 fix the remaining issues.</p>
 643
 644 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 645 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 646 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 647 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 648
 649       </div>
 650       <div class="tags">
 651
 652
 653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 654
 655
 656       </div>
 657     </div>
 658     <div class="padding"></div>
 659
 660     <div class="entry">
 661       <div class="title">
 662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
 663       </div>
 664       <div class="date">
 665         13th May 2010
 666       </div>
 667       <div class="body">
 668         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
 669 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
 670 has been
 671 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
 672
 673 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
 674 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
 675 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
 676 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
 677 based boot system.  Tollef is
 678 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
 679 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
 680 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
 681 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
 682 at the moment do not.</p>
 683
 684 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
 685 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
 686 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
 687 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
 688 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
 689 way forward.</p>
 690
 691 <p>In the mean time, based on the
 692 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 693 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
 694 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
 695 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
 696 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
 697 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
 698 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
 699 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
 700
 701       </div>
 702       <div class="tags">
 703
 704
 705         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 706
 707
 708       </div>
 709     </div>
 710     <div class="padding"></div>
 711
 712     <div class="entry">
 713       <div class="title">
 714         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
 715       </div>
 716       <div class="date">
 717         14th May 2010
 718       </div>
 719       <div class="body">
 720         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
 721 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
 722 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
 723 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
 724 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
 725 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
 726 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
 727 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
 728
 729 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
 730 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
 731 this on the collector host:</p>
 732
 733 <blockquote><pre>
 734 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
 735 </pre></blockquote>
 736
 737 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
 738 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
 739
 740 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
 741 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
 742 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
 743 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
 744 written yet.</p>
 745
 746       </div>
 747       <div class="tags">
 748
 749
 750         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
 751
 752
 753       </div>
 754     </div>
 755     <div class="padding"></div>
 756
 757     <div class="entry">
 758       <div class="title">
 759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
 760       </div>
 761       <div class="date">
 762         14th May 2010
 763       </div>
 764       <div class="body">
 765         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
 766 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
 767 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
 768 expected, if I am to believe the
 769 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
 770 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
 771 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
 772 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
 773 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
 774 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
 775 version.</p>
 776
 777 More information about
 778 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
 779 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
 780 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
 781 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
 782
 783 <blockquote><pre>
 784 CONCURRENCY=none
 785 </pre></blockquote>
 786
 787 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 788 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 789 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 790 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 791
 792       </div>
 793       <div class="tags">
 794
 795
 796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 797
 798
 799       </div>
 800     </div>
 801     <div class="padding"></div>
 802
 803     <div class="entry">
 804       <div class="title">
 805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
 806       </div>
 807       <div class="date">
 808         22nd May 2010
 809       </div>
 810       <div class="body">
 811         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
 812 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
 813 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
 814 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
 815
 816 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
 817 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
 818 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
 819 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
 820 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
 821 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
 822 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
 823 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
 824 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
 825 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
 826 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
 827 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
 828 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
 829 going to work.</p>
 830
 831 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
 832 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
 833 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
 834 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
 835 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
 836 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
 837 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
 838 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
 839 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
 840 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
 841 Edu.</p>
 842
 843 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
 844 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
 845 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
 846 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
 847 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
 848 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
 849
 850 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
 851 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
 852
 853       </div>
 854       <div class="tags">
 855
 856
 857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 858
 859
 860       </div>
 861     </div>
 862     <div class="padding"></div>
 863
 864     <div class="entry">
 865       <div class="title">
 866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
 867       </div>
 868       <div class="date">
 869         27th May 2010
 870       </div>
 871       <div class="body">
 872         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
 873 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
 874 issues are known and should be solved:
 875
 876 <p><ul>
 877
 878 <li>The wicd package seen to
 879 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
 880 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
 881 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
 882 seem to be on the case.</li>
 883
 884 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
 885 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
 886 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
 887 maintainer is on the case.</li>
 888
 889 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
 890 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
 891 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
 892 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
 893 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
 894 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
 895 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
 896 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
 897
 898 </ul></p>
 899
 900 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
 901 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
 902 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
 903 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
 904
 905 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
 906 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
 907 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 908 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
 909
 910 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
 911
 912       </div>
 913       <div class="tags">
 914
 915
 916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 917
 918
 919       </div>
 920     </div>
 921     <div class="padding"></div>
 922
 923     <div class="entry">
 924       <div class="title">
 925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
 926       </div>
 927       <div class="date">
 928          1st June 2010
 929       </div>
 930       <div class="body">
 931         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
 932 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
 933 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
 934 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
 935 wait.</p>
 936
 937 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
 938 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
 939 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
 940 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
 941 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
 942 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
 943
 944 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
 945 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
 946 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
 947 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
 948 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
 949 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
 950 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
 951 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
 952
 953 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
 954
 955       </div>
 956       <div class="tags">
 957
 958
 959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 960
 961
 962       </div>
 963     </div>
 964     <div class="padding"></div>
 965
 966     <div class="entry">
 967       <div class="title">
 968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
 969       </div>
 970       <div class="date">
 971          3rd June 2010
 972       </div>
 973       <div class="body">
 974         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
 975 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
 976 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
 977 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
 978 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
 979
 980 <blockquote><pre>
 981 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
 982   vendor                    count
 983   Dell Computer Corporation     1
 984     PowerEdge 1750              1
 985   IBM                           1
 986     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
 987   Intel                         2
 988   [no-dmi-info]                 3
 989 maintainer:~#
 990 </pre></blockquote>
 991
 992 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
 993 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
 994 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
 995 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
 996 option to list the individual machines.</p>
 997
 998 <p>A larger list is
 999 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
1000 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
1001 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
1002 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
1003 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
1004 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
1005 collector.</p>
1006
1007       </div>
1008       <div class="tags">
1009
1010
1011         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
1012
1013
1014       </div>
1015     </div>
1016     <div class="padding"></div>
1017
1018     <div class="entry">
1019       <div class="title">
1020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
1021       </div>
1022       <div class="date">
1023          6th June 2010
1024       </div>
1025       <div class="body">
1026         <p>Via the
1027 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
1028 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
1029 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
1030 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
1031 following the standards wars of today.</p>
1032
1033       </div>
1034       <div class="tags">
1035
1036
1037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1038
1039
1040       </div>
1041     </div>
1042     <div class="padding"></div>
1043
1044     <div class="entry">
1045       <div class="title">
1046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
1047       </div>
1048       <div class="date">
1049          6th June 2010
1050       </div>
1051       <div class="body">
1052         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
1053 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
1054 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
1055 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
1056 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
1057 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
1058 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
1059
1060 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
1061 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
1062 COLUMNS):</p>
1063
1064 <blockquote><pre>
1065 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
1066 previous=N
1067 PREVLEVEL=
1068 RUNLEVEL=
1069 runlevel=S
1070 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
1071 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
1072 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
1073 </pre></blockquote>
1074
1075 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
1076 script.</p>
1077
1078 <blockquote><pre>
1079 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
1080 previous=N
1081 PREVLEVEL=N
1082 RUNLEVEL=S
1083 runlevel=S
1084 </pre></blockquote>
1085
1086 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
1087 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
1088 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
1089
1090 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
1091 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
1092 choice.</p>
1093
1094       </div>
1095       <div class="tags">
1096
1097
1098         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1099
1100
1101       </div>
1102     </div>
1103     <div class="padding"></div>
1104
1105     <div class="entry">
1106       <div class="title">
1107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
1108       </div>
1109       <div class="date">
1110         11th June 2010
1111       </div>
1112       <div class="body">
1113         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
1114 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
1115 have been discovered and reported in the process
1116 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
1117 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
1118 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
1119 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
1120 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
1121
1122 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
1123 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
1124 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
1125 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
1126 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
1127 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
1128
1129 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
1130 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
1131 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
1132 is created.  The bug report
1133 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
1134 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
1135 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
1136 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
1137 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
1138 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
1139 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
1140 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
1141 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
1142 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
1143 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
1144 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
1145 Debian Squeeze.</p>
1146
1147 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
1148 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
1149 trick:</p>
1150
1151 <blockquote><pre>
1152 #!/bin/sh
1153 set -ex
1154
1155 if [ "$1" ] ; then
1156     desktop=$1
1157 else
1158     desktop=gnome
1159 fi
1160
1161 from=lenny
1162 to=squeeze
1163
1164 exec &lt; /dev/null
1165 unset LANG
1166 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
1167 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
1168 fuser -mv .
1169 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
1170 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
1171 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
1172 #!/bin/sh
1173 exit 101
1174 EOF
1175 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
1176 exit_cleanup() {
1177     umount $tmpdir/proc
1178 }
1179 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
1180 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
1181 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
1182
1183 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
1184
1185 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
1186 # to return the correct answers.
1187 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
1188     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
1189
1190 # Include the desktop and laptop task
1191 for test in desktop laptop ; do
1192     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
1193 #!/bin/sh
1194 exit 2
1195 EOF
1196     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
1197 done
1198
1199 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1200 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
1201 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
1202 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
1203
1204 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
1205 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
1206 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
1207 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
1208 fuser -mv
1209 </pre></blockquote>
1210
1211 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
1212 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
1213 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
1214 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
1215 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
1216 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
1217
1218 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
1219 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
1220 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
1221 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
1222 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
1223 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
1224 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
1225
1226 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
1227 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
1228 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
1229 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
1230 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
1231 packages.</p>
1232
1233       </div>
1234       <div class="tags">
1235
1236
1237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1238
1239
1240       </div>
1241     </div>
1242     <div class="padding"></div>
1243
1244     <div class="entry">
1245       <div class="title">
1246         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
1247       </div>
1248       <div class="date">
1249         13th June 2010
1250       </div>
1251       <div class="body">
1252         <p>My
1253 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
1254 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
1255 finally made the upgrade logs available from
1256 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
1257 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
1258 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
1259 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
1260
1261 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
1262 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
1263 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
1264 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
1265 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
1266 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
1267 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
1268 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
1269
1270 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
1271 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
1272 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
1273 too surprising.</p>
1274
1275 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
1276 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
1277 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
1278 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
1279 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
1280 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
1281 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
1282 continue.</p>
1283
1284 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
1285 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
1286   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
1287   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
1288   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
1289   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
1290   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
1291   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1292   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1293   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
1294   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
1295   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
1296   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
1297   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1298   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1299   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1300   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1301   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1302   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
1303   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
1304   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
1305   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
1306   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
1307   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
1308   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
1309   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
1310   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
1311   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
1312   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
1313   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
1314
1315 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
1316
1317 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
1318   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
1319   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
1320   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
1321   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
1322   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
1323   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
1324   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
1325   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
1326   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
1327   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1328   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
1329   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
1330   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
1331   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
1332   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
1333   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
1334   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
1335   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
1336   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
1337   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
1338   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
1339   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
1340   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
1341   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
1342   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
1343   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
1344   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
1345   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
1346   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1347   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
1348   zip</p>
1349
1350 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
1351
1352 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
1353   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
1354   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
1355   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
1356   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
1357   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
1358   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1359   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1360   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
1361   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
1362   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
1363   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
1364   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1365   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1366   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1367   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1368   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1369   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
1370   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
1371   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
1372   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
1373   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
1374   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
1375   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
1376   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
1377   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
1378   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
1379   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
1380
1381 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
1382 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
1383   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
1384   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
1385   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
1386   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
1387   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
1388   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
1389   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
1390   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
1391   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
1392   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
1393   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
1394   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
1395   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
1396   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
1397   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
1398   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
1399   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
1400   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
1401   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
1402   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
1403   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
1404   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
1405   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
1406   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
1407   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
1408   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
1409   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
1410   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
1411   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
1412   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
1413   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
1414   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
1415   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
1416   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
1417   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
1418   xulrunner-1.9</p>
1419
1420
1421       </div>
1422       <div class="tags">
1423
1424
1425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1426
1427
1428       </div>
1429     </div>
1430     <div class="padding"></div>
1431
1432     <div class="entry">
1433       <div class="title">
1434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
1435       </div>
1436       <div class="date">
1437         16th June 2010
1438       </div>
1439       <div class="body">
1440         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
1441 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
1442 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
1443 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
1444 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
1445 this:
1446
1447 <blockquote><pre>
1448 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1449 tasksel --new-install
1450 </pre></blockquote>
1451
1452 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
1453 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
1454 any output what so ever.
1455
1456 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
1457 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
1458 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
1459 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
1460 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
1461 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
1462 code like this:
1463
1464 <blockquote><pre>
1465 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
1466 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
1467 $cmd
1468 </pre></blockquote>
1469
1470 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
1471 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
1472 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
1473 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
1474 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
1475 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
1476 installation.</p>
1477
1478 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
1479 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
1480 like this.</p>
1481
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="tags">
1484
1485
1486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1487
1488
1489       </div>
1490     </div>
1491     <div class="padding"></div>
1492
1493     <div class="entry">
1494       <div class="title">
1495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
1496       </div>
1497       <div class="date">
1498         24th June 2010
1499       </div>
1500       <div class="body">
1501         <p>A while back, I
1502 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
1503 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
1504 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
1505 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
1506
1507 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
1508 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
1509 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
1510 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
1511
1512 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
1513 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
1514 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
1515 Debian Edu.</p>
1516
1517 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
1518 the
1519 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
1520 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
1521 available today from IETF.</p>
1522
1523 <pre>
1524 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
1525 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
1526 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
1527  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
1528         NAME 'dhcpHost'
1529         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
1530 -       SUP top
1531 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
1532         MUST cn
1533         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
1534         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
1535 </pre>
1536
1537 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
1538 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
1539 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
1540
1541 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1542 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1543
1544       </div>
1545       <div class="tags">
1546
1547
1548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1549
1550
1551       </div>
1552     </div>
1553     <div class="padding"></div>
1554
1555     <div class="entry">
1556       <div class="title">
1557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
1558       </div>
1559       <div class="date">
1560         28th June 2010
1561       </div>
1562       <div class="body">
1563         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
1564 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
1565 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
1566 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
1567 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
1568 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
1569 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
1570 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
1571 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
1572 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
1573
1574 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
1575 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
1576 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
1577 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
1578 released.</p>
1579
1580 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
1581 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
1582 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
1583 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
1584
1585 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
1586 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1587
1588 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
1589 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
1590 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
1591 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
1592 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
1593
1594       </div>
1595       <div class="tags">
1596
1597
1598         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1599
1600
1601       </div>
1602     </div>
1603     <div class="padding"></div>
1604
1605     <div class="entry">
1606       <div class="title">
1607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
1608       </div>
1609       <div class="date">
1610          3rd July 2010
1611       </div>
1612       <div class="body">
1613         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
1614 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
1615 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
1616 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
1617 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
1618 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
1619 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
1620 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
1621
1622 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
1623 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
1624 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
1625 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
1626 publish the difference.</p>
1627
1628 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1629
1630 <blockquote><p>
1631   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1632   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
1633   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
1634   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
1635   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
1636   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
1637   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
1638   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
1639 </p></blockquote>
1640
1641 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1642
1643 <blockquote><p>
1644   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
1645   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
1646   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
1647   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
1648   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
1649   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
1650   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
1651   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
1652   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1653   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
1654   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
1655   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
1656   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
1657   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
1658   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
1659   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
1660   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
1661   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
1662   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
1663   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
1664 </p></blockquote>
1665
1666 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1667
1668 <blockquote><p>
1669   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
1670   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
1671   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
1672   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
1673   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
1674   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
1675   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
1676   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
1677   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
1678   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
1679   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
1680   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
1681   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
1682   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
1683   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
1684   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
1685   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
1686   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
1687   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
1688   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
1689   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
1690 </p></blockquote>
1691
1692 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1693
1694 <blockquote><p>
1695   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
1696   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
1697   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
1698 </p></blockquote>
1699
1700 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
1701 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
1702 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
1703 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
1704 the difference somewhat.
1705
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="tags">
1708
1709
1710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1711
1712
1713       </div>
1714     </div>
1715     <div class="padding"></div>
1716
1717     <div class="entry">
1718       <div class="title">
1719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
1720       </div>
1721       <div class="date">
1722          9th July 2010
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="body">
1725         <p>Since
1726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
1727 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
1728 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
1729 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
1730 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
1731 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
1732 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
1733 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
1734 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
1735 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
1736 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
1737 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
1738 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
1739
1740       </div>
1741       <div class="tags">
1742
1743
1744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1745
1746
1747       </div>
1748     </div>
1749     <div class="padding"></div>
1750
1751     <div class="entry">
1752       <div class="title">
1753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
1754       </div>
1755       <div class="date">
1756         11th July 2010
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="body">
1759         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
1760 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
1761 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
1762 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
1763
1764 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
1765 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
1766 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
1767 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
1768 LTSP clients.</p>
1769
1770 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
1771 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
1772 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
1773
1774 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
1775 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
1776 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
1777
1778 <blockquote><pre>
1779 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
1780 #
1781 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
1782 #
1783 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
1784 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
1785 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
1786 #
1787 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
1788 # existence of attribute names.
1789 #
1790 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
1791 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
1792 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
1793 #
1794 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
1795 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
1796 #
1797 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
1798 #     SUP top
1799 #     AUXILIARY
1800 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
1801
1802 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
1803 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
1804     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
1805     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
1806         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
1807         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
1808             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
1809             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
1810             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
1811             # bass value on to clients
1812             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
1813         done
1814     done
1815 fi
1816 </pre></blockquote>
1817
1818 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
1819 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
1820 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
1821 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
1822 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
1823
1824 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1825 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1826
1827 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
1828 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
1829 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
1830 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
1831 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
1832 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
1833
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="tags">
1836
1837
1838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1839
1840
1841       </div>
1842     </div>
1843     <div class="padding"></div>
1844
1845     <div class="entry">
1846       <div class="title">
1847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
1848       </div>
1849       <div class="date">
1850         14th July 2010
1851       </div>
1852       <div class="body">
1853         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
1854 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
1855 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
1856 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
1857 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
1858
1859 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
1860 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
1861
1862 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
1863 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
1864 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
1865 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
1866 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
1867 to a slave DNS server.</p>
1868
1869 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
1870 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
1871 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
1872 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
1873 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
1874 seem to work.</p>
1875
1876 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
1877 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
1878 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
1879 this:</p>
1880
1881 <blockquote><pre>
1882   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1883   cn: hostname
1884   objectClass: dhcphost
1885   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
1886   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
1887   associateddomain: hostname.intern
1888   arecord: 10.11.12.13
1889   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
1890   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
1891   ldapconfigsound: Y
1892 </pre></blockquote>
1893
1894 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
1895 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
1896 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
1897 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
1898
1899 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
1900 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
1901 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
1902 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
1903 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
1904 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
1905 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
1906 might be a good place to put it.</p>
1907
1908 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
1909 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
1910
1911       </div>
1912       <div class="tags">
1913
1914
1915         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
1916
1917
1918       </div>
1919     </div>
1920     <div class="padding"></div>
1921
1922     <div class="entry">
1923       <div class="title">
1924         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
1925       </div>
1926       <div class="date">
1927         17th July 2010
1928       </div>
1929       <div class="body">
1930         <p>This is a
1931 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
1932 on my
1933 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
1934 work</a> on
1935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
1936 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
1937
1938 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
1939 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
1940 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
1941 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
1942
1943 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
1944 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
1945 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
1946
1947 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
1948
1949 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
1950 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
1951 the web.
1952
1953 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
1954 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
1955 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
1956 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
1957 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
1958 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
1959
1960 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
1961 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
1962 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
1963 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
1964 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
1965 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
1966 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
1967 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
1968 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
1969 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
1970 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
1971 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
1972 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
1973 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
1974 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
1975 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
1976
1977 <blockquote><pre>
1978 ldapsearch -h ldap \
1979   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
1980   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
1981   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
1982   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
1983   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
1984   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
1985
1986 ldapsearch -h ldap \
1987   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
1988   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
1989   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
1990   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
1991   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
1992 </pre></blockquote>
1993
1994 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
1995 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
1996 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
1997 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1998 also exist.</p>
1999
2000 <blockquote><pre>
2001 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2002 objectclass: top
2003 objectclass: dnsdomain
2004 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2005 dc: tjener
2006 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2007 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2008
2009 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2010 objectclass: top
2011 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2012 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2013 dc: 2
2014 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2015 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2016 </pre></blockquote>
2017
2018 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
2019 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
2020 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2021 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2022 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2023 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2024 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
2025 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
2026 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2027 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2028 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2029 instead.</p>
2030
2031 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2032 like this:</p>
2033
2034 <blockquote><pre>
2035 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2036   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2037   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2038   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2039   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2040   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2041
2042 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2043   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2044 </pre></blockquote>
2045
2046 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2047 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2048 reverse lookups.</p>
2049
2050 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2051 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2052 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
2053 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
2054
2055 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2056 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
2057 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
2058
2059 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2060 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2061 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
2062 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2063 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
2064
2065 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2066 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2067 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2068 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
2069 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
2070
2071 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
2072 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
2073 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
2074 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
2075 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
2076 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
2077
2078 <blockquote><pre>
2079 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
2080     SUP top
2081     AUXILIARY
2082     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
2083           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
2084           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
2085           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
2086           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
2087     ))
2088 </pre></blockquote>
2089
2090 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
2091 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
2092 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
2093 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
2094 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
2095 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
2096
2097 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
2098
2099 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
2100 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
2101 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
2102 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
2103 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
2104
2105 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
2106 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
2107 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
2108 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
2109
2110 <blockquote><pre>
2111 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
2112 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
2113 </pre></blockquote>
2114
2115 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
2116 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
2117 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
2118 search result is this entry:</p>
2119
2120 <blockquote><pre>
2121 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2122 cn: dhcp
2123 objectClass: top
2124 objectClass: dhcpServer
2125 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2126 </pre></blockquote>
2127
2128 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
2129 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
2130 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
2131 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
2132 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
2133 The search result is this entry:</p>
2134
2135 <blockquote><pre>
2136 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2137 cn: DHCP Config
2138 objectClass: top
2139 objectClass: dhcpService
2140 objectClass: dhcpOptions
2141 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2142 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
2143 dhcpStatements: authoritative
2144 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
2145 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
2146 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
2147 </pre></blockquote>
2148
2149 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
2150 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
2151 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
2152 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
2153 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
2154 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
2155 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
2156 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
2157 related computer objects.</p>
2158
2159 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
2160 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
2161 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
2162 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
2163 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
2164 like:</p>
2165
2166 <blockquote><pre>
2167 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2168 cn: hostname
2169 objectClass: top
2170 objectClass: dhcpHost
2171 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2172 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
2173 </pre></blockquote>
2174
2175 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
2176 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
2177 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
2178 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
2179 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
2180 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
2181 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
2182 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
2183 structural object class.
2184
2185 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
2186
2187 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
2188 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
2189 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
2190 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
2191 in the configuration.</p>
2192
2193 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
2194 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
2195 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
2196 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
2197 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
2198 structure.</p>
2199
2200 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
2201 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
2202
2203 <blockquote><pre>
2204 ou=services
2205   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
2206     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
2207     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2208       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2209         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2210     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2211       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2212         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2213     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
2214       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
2215 </pre></blockquote>
2216
2217 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
2218 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
2219 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
2220 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
2221
2222 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
2223 like this:</p>
2224
2225 <blockquote><pre>
2226 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2227 dc: hostname
2228 objectClass: top
2229 objectClass: dhcpHost
2230 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2231 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
2232 associateddomain: hostname.intern
2233 arecord: 10.11.12.13
2234 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2235 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
2236 </pre></blockquote>
2237
2238 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
2239 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
2240 auxiliary object class.</p>
2241
2242       </div>
2243       <div class="tags">
2244
2245
2246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2247
2248
2249       </div>
2250     </div>
2251     <div class="padding"></div>
2252
2253     <div class="entry">
2254       <div class="title">
2255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
2256       </div>
2257       <div class="date">
2258         27th July 2010
2259       </div>
2260       <div class="body">
2261         <p>I discovered this while doing
2262 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
2263 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
2264 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2265 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2266 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
2267
2268 <p>An example is from todays
2269 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
2270 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2271 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
2272 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2273 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2274 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2275 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
2276
2277 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
2278
2279 <blockquote><pre>
2280 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2281  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
2282   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2283 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2284  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2285 </pre></blockquote>
2286
2287 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2288 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
2289 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2290 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2291 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2292 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2293 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2294 of dependency loops.</p>
2295
2296 <p>Thanks to
2297 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
2298 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
2299 dependencies
2300 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
2301 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
2302
2303 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2304 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
2305 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
2306 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2307 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2308 it.</p>
2309
2310       </div>
2311       <div class="tags">
2312
2313
2314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2315
2316
2317       </div>
2318     </div>
2319     <div class="padding"></div>
2320
2321     <div class="entry">
2322       <div class="title">
2323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
2324       </div>
2325       <div class="date">
2326          4th September 2010
2327       </div>
2328       <div class="body">
2329         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
2330 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2331 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
2332 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
2333 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
2334 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2335 installed.</p>
2336
2337 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
2338 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
2339 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2340 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
2341 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2342 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
2343 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2344 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2345 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
2346
2347 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2348 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2349 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
2350 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2351 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2352 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2353 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2354 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2355 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2356 pages they want to visit.</p>
2357
2358 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2359 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2360 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2361 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2362 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2363 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2364 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2365 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2366 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
2367 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2368 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
2369
2370       </div>
2371       <div class="tags">
2372
2373
2374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2375
2376
2377       </div>
2378     </div>
2379     <div class="padding"></div>
2380
2381     <div class="entry">
2382       <div class="title">
2383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
2384       </div>
2385       <div class="date">
2386         24th October 2010
2387       </div>
2388       <div class="body">
2389         <p>Some updates.</p>
2390
2391 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
2392 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
2393 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
2394 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2395 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
2396 :)</p>
2397
2398 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2399 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2400 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2401 It is called
2402 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
2403 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
2404 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2405 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2406 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2407 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
2408
2409 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
2410 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
2411 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
2412 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2413 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
2414 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2415 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2416 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
2417 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2418 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
2419
2420       </div>
2421       <div class="tags">
2422
2423
2424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2425
2426
2427       </div>
2428     </div>
2429     <div class="padding"></div>
2430
2431     <div class="entry">
2432       <div class="title">
2433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
2434       </div>
2435       <div class="date">
2436          9th November 2010
2437       </div>
2438       <div class="body">
2439         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
2440
2441 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
2442 3D linked in from
2443 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
2444 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
2445
2446       </div>
2447       <div class="tags">
2448
2449
2450         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2451
2452
2453       </div>
2454     </div>
2455     <div class="padding"></div>
2456
2457     <div class="entry">
2458       <div class="title">
2459         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
2460       </div>
2461       <div class="date">
2462         20th November 2010
2463       </div>
2464       <div class="body">
2465         <p>Answering
2466 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
2467 call from the Gnash project</a> for
2468 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
2469 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
2470 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
2471 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
2472 releases out more often.</p>
2473
2474 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
2475 I have considered setting up a <a
2476 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
2477 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
2478 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
2479 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
2480 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
2481 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
2482 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
2483 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
2484 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
2485 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
2486 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
2487 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
2488
2489       </div>
2490       <div class="tags">
2491
2492
2493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2494
2495
2496       </div>
2497     </div>
2498     <div class="padding"></div>
2499
2500     <div class="entry">
2501       <div class="title">
2502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
2503       </div>
2504       <div class="date">
2505         20th November 2010
2506       </div>
2507       <div class="body">
2508         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
2509 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2510 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2511 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
2512
2513 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2514 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2515 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
2516
2517 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2518
2519 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2520
2521 <blockquote><p>
2522   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2523   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
2524   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2525   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2526   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2527   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2528   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2529   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2530   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2531   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2532   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2533   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2534   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2535   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2536   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
2537   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
2538   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2539   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
2540   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2541   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2542   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
2543   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2544   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2545   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2546   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2547   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2548   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2549   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2550   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2551   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
2552   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
2553   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2554   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2555   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
2556   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
2557   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2558   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2559   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2560   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
2561   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2562   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2563   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2564   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2565   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2566   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2567   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2568   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2569   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2570   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2571   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2572   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2573   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2574   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2575   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2576   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2577   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2578   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2579   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2580   zip
2581 </p></blockquote>
2582
2583 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2584
2585 <blockquote><p>
2586   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2587   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2588   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2589   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2590   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2591   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2592   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2593   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2594   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2595   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2596   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2597   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2598   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2599   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2600   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2601   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2602   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2603   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2604   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2605   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2606   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2607   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2608   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2609   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2610   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2611   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2612   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2613   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2614   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2615 </p></blockquote>
2616
2617 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2618
2619 <blockquote><p>
2620   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2621 </p></blockquote>
2622
2623 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2624
2625 <blockquote><p>
2626 [nothing]
2627 </p></blockquote>
2628
2629 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2630
2631 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2632
2633 <blockquote><p>
2634   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2635   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2636   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2637   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2638   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2639   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2640   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2641   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2642   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2643   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2644   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2645   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2646   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2647   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2648   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2649   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2650   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2651   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2652   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2653   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2654   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2655   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2656   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2657   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2658   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2659   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2660   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2661   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2662   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2663   ttf-sazanami-gothic
2664 </p></blockquote>
2665
2666 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2667
2668 <blockquote><p>
2669   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2670   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2671   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2672   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2673   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2674   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2675   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2676   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2677   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2678   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2679   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2680   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2681   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2682   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2683   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2684   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2685   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
2686   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2687   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2688   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
2689   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2690   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
2691   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
2692   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
2693   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
2694   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
2695   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
2696   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
2697   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
2698   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
2699   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
2700   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
2701   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
2702 </p></blockquote>
2703
2704 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2705
2706 <blockquote><p>
2707   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
2708   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
2709   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
2710   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
2711   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2712   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
2713   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2714 </p></blockquote>
2715
2716 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2717
2718 <blockquote><p>
2719   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
2720 </p></blockquote>
2721
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="tags">
2724
2725
2726         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2727
2728
2729       </div>
2730     </div>
2731     <div class="padding"></div>
2732
2733     <div class="entry">
2734       <div class="title">
2735         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
2736       </div>
2737       <div class="date">
2738         22nd November 2010
2739       </div>
2740       <div class="body">
2741         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2742 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
2743 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
2744 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2745 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
2746 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2747 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2748 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
2749 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
2750
2751 <p>I found
2752 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
2753 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2754 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2755 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2756 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
2757 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
2758
2759 <pre>
2760 #!/bin/sh
2761
2762 # Based on
2763 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2764
2765 set -e
2766 set -x
2767
2768 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
2769     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
2770     exit 1
2771 else
2772     host="$1"
2773 fi
2774
2775 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2776     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
2777     exit 1
2778 fi
2779
2780 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
2781 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2782 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2783 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2784
2785 img=$host.img
2786 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2787 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2788
2789 parted $img mklabel msdos
2790 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
2791 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2792 parted $img set 1 boot on
2793
2794 modprobe dm-mod
2795 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2796 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2797
2798 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
2799 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2800 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2801
2802 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2803 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2804 </pre>
2805
2806 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2807 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
2808
2809 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2810 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
2811 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
2812 seem to work just fine.</p>
2813
2814       </div>
2815       <div class="tags">
2816
2817
2818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2819
2820
2821       </div>
2822     </div>
2823     <div class="padding"></div>
2824
2825     <div class="entry">
2826       <div class="title">
2827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
2828       </div>
2829       <div class="date">
2830         22nd November 2010
2831       </div>
2832       <div class="body">
2833         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2834 upgrade testing of the
2835 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2836 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2837 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2838 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2839
2840 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2841
2842 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2843
2844 <blockquote><p>
2845   apache2.2-bin
2846   aptdaemon
2847   baobab
2848   binfmt-support
2849   browser-plugin-gnash
2850   cheese-common
2851   cli-common
2852   cups-pk-helper
2853   dmz-cursor-theme
2854   empathy
2855   empathy-common
2856   freedesktop-sound-theme
2857   freeglut3
2858   gconf-defaults-service
2859   gdm-themes
2860   gedit-plugins
2861   geoclue
2862   geoclue-hostip
2863   geoclue-localnet
2864   geoclue-manual
2865   geoclue-yahoo
2866   gnash
2867   gnash-common
2868   gnome
2869   gnome-backgrounds
2870   gnome-cards-data
2871   gnome-codec-install
2872   gnome-core
2873   gnome-desktop-environment
2874   gnome-disk-utility
2875   gnome-screenshot
2876   gnome-search-tool
2877   gnome-session-canberra
2878   gnome-system-log
2879   gnome-themes-extras
2880   gnome-themes-more
2881   gnome-user-share
2882   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2883   gstreamer0.10-tools
2884   gtk2-engines
2885   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2886   gtk2-engines-smooth
2887   hamster-applet
2888   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2889   libapr1
2890   libaprutil1
2891   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2892   libaprutil1-ldap
2893   libart2.0-cil
2894   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2895   libboost-python1.42.0
2896   libboost-thread1.42.0
2897   libchamplain-0.4-0
2898   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2899   libcheese-gtk18
2900   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2901   libcryptui0
2902   libdiscid0
2903   libelf1
2904   libepc-1.0-2
2905   libepc-common
2906   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2907   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2908   libfreerdp0
2909   libgconf2.0-cil
2910   libgdata-common
2911   libgdata7
2912   libgdu-gtk0
2913   libgee2
2914   libgeoclue0
2915   libgexiv2-0
2916   libgif4
2917   libglade2.0-cil
2918   libglib2.0-cil
2919   libgmime2.4-cil
2920   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2921   libgnome2.24-cil
2922   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2923   libgpod-common
2924   libgpod4
2925   libgtk2.0-cil
2926   libgtkglext1
2927   libgtksourceview2.0-common
2928   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2929   libmono-addins0.2-cil
2930   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2931   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2932   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2933   libmono-posix2.0-cil
2934   libmono-security2.0-cil
2935   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2936   libmono-system2.0-cil
2937   libmtp8
2938   libmusicbrainz3-6
2939   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2940   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2941   libopal3.6.8
2942   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2943   libpt2.6.7
2944   libpython2.6
2945   librpm1
2946   librpmio1
2947   libsdl1.2debian
2948   libsrtp0
2949   libssh-4
2950   libtelepathy-farsight0
2951   libtelepathy-glib0
2952   libtidy-0.99-0
2953   media-player-info
2954   mesa-utils
2955   mono-2.0-gac
2956   mono-gac
2957   mono-runtime
2958   nautilus-sendto
2959   nautilus-sendto-empathy
2960   p7zip-full
2961   pkg-config
2962   python-aptdaemon
2963   python-aptdaemon-gtk
2964   python-axiom
2965   python-beautifulsoup
2966   python-bugbuddy
2967   python-clientform
2968   python-coherence
2969   python-configobj
2970   python-crypto
2971   python-cupshelpers
2972   python-elementtree
2973   python-epsilon
2974   python-evolution
2975   python-feedparser
2976   python-gdata
2977   python-gdbm
2978   python-gst0.10
2979   python-gtkglext1
2980   python-gtksourceview2
2981   python-httplib2
2982   python-louie
2983   python-mako
2984   python-markupsafe
2985   python-mechanize
2986   python-nevow
2987   python-notify
2988   python-opengl
2989   python-openssl
2990   python-pam
2991   python-pkg-resources
2992   python-pyasn1
2993   python-pysqlite2
2994   python-rdflib
2995   python-serial
2996   python-tagpy
2997   python-twisted-bin
2998   python-twisted-conch
2999   python-twisted-core
3000   python-twisted-web
3001   python-utidylib
3002   python-webkit
3003   python-xdg
3004   python-zope.interface
3005   remmina
3006   remmina-plugin-data
3007   remmina-plugin-rdp
3008   remmina-plugin-vnc
3009   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3010   rhythmbox-plugins
3011   rpm-common
3012   rpm2cpio
3013   seahorse-plugins
3014   shotwell
3015   software-center
3016   system-config-printer-udev
3017   telepathy-gabble
3018   telepathy-mission-control-5
3019   telepathy-salut
3020   tomboy
3021   totem
3022   totem-coherence
3023   totem-mozilla
3024   totem-plugins
3025   transmission-common
3026   xdg-user-dirs
3027   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3028   xserver-xephyr
3029 </p></blockquote>
3030
3031 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3032
3033 <blockquote><p>
3034   cheese
3035   ekiga
3036   eog
3037   epiphany-extensions
3038   evolution-exchange
3039   fast-user-switch-applet
3040   file-roller
3041   gcalctool
3042   gconf-editor
3043   gdm
3044   gedit
3045   gedit-common
3046   gnome-games
3047   gnome-games-data
3048   gnome-nettool
3049   gnome-system-tools
3050   gnome-themes
3051   gnuchess
3052   gucharmap
3053   guile-1.8-libs
3054   libavahi-ui0
3055   libdmx1
3056   libgalago3
3057   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3058   libgtksourceview2.0-0
3059   liblircclient0
3060   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3061   libspeexdsp1
3062   libsvga1
3063   rhythmbox
3064   seahorse
3065   sound-juicer
3066   system-config-printer
3067   totem-common
3068   transmission-gtk
3069   vinagre
3070   vino
3071 </p></blockquote>
3072
3073 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3074
3075 <blockquote><p>
3076   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3077 </p></blockquote>
3078
3079 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3080
3081 <blockquote><p>
3082 [nothing]
3083 </p></blockquote>
3084
3085 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3086
3087 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3088
3089 <blockquote><p>
3090   ksmserver
3091 </p></blockquote>
3092
3093 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3094
3095 <blockquote><p>
3096   kwin
3097   network-manager-kde
3098 </p></blockquote>
3099
3100 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3101
3102 <blockquote><p>
3103   arts
3104   dolphin
3105   freespacenotifier
3106   google-gadgets-gst
3107   google-gadgets-xul
3108   kappfinder
3109   kcalc
3110   kcharselect
3111   kde-core
3112   kde-plasma-desktop
3113   kde-standard
3114   kde-window-manager
3115   kdeartwork
3116   kdeartwork-emoticons
3117   kdeartwork-style
3118   kdeartwork-theme-icon
3119   kdebase
3120   kdebase-apps
3121   kdebase-workspace
3122   kdebase-workspace-bin
3123   kdebase-workspace-data
3124   kdeeject
3125   kdelibs
3126   kdeplasma-addons
3127   kdeutils
3128   kdewallpapers
3129   kdf
3130   kfloppy
3131   kgpg
3132   khelpcenter4
3133   kinfocenter
3134   konq-plugins-l10n
3135   konqueror-nsplugins
3136   kscreensaver
3137   kscreensaver-xsavers
3138   ktimer
3139   kwrite
3140   libgle3
3141   libkde4-ruby1.8
3142   libkonq5
3143   libkonq5-templates
3144   libnetpbm10
3145   libplasma-ruby
3146   libplasma-ruby1.8
3147   libqt4-ruby1.8
3148   marble-data
3149   marble-plugins
3150   netpbm
3151   nuvola-icon-theme
3152   plasma-dataengines-workspace
3153   plasma-desktop
3154   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3155   plasma-runners-addons
3156   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3157   plasma-scriptengine-python
3158   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3159   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3160   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3161   plasma-scriptengines
3162   plasma-wallpapers-addons
3163   plasma-widget-folderview
3164   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3165   ruby
3166   sweeper
3167   update-notifier-kde
3168   xscreensaver-data-extra
3169   xscreensaver-gl
3170   xscreensaver-gl-extra
3171   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3172 </p></blockquote>
3173
3174 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3175
3176 <blockquote><p>
3177   ark
3178   google-gadgets-common
3179   google-gadgets-qt
3180   htdig
3181   kate
3182   kdebase-bin
3183   kdebase-data
3184   kdepasswd
3185   kfind
3186   klipper
3187   konq-plugins
3188   konqueror
3189   ksysguard
3190   ksysguardd
3191   libarchive1
3192   libcln6
3193   libeet1
3194   libeina-svn-06
3195   libggadget-1.0-0b
3196   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3197   libgps19
3198   libkdecorations4
3199   libkephal4
3200   libkonq4
3201   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3202   libkscreensaver5
3203   libksgrd4
3204   libksignalplotter4
3205   libkunitconversion4
3206   libkwineffects1a
3207   libmarblewidget4
3208   libntrack-qt4-1
3209   libntrack0
3210   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3211   libplasmaclock4a
3212   libplasmagenericshell4
3213   libprocesscore4a
3214   libprocessui4a
3215   libqalculate5
3216   libqedje0a
3217   libqtruby4shared2
3218   libqzion0a
3219   libruby1.8
3220   libscim8c2a
3221   libsmokekdecore4-3
3222   libsmokekdeui4-3
3223   libsmokekfile3
3224   libsmokekhtml3
3225   libsmokekio3
3226   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3227   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3228   libsmokekparts3
3229   libsmokektexteditor3
3230   libsmokekutils3
3231   libsmokenepomuk3
3232   libsmokephonon3
3233   libsmokeplasma3
3234   libsmokeqtcore4-3
3235   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3236   libsmokeqtgui4-3
3237   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3238   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3239   libsmokeqtscript4-3
3240   libsmokeqtsql4-3
3241   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3242   libsmokeqttest4-3
3243   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3244   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3245   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3246   libsmokesolid3
3247   libsmokesoprano3
3248   libtaskmanager4a
3249   libtidy-0.99-0
3250   libweather-ion4a
3251   libxklavier16
3252   libxxf86misc1
3253   okteta
3254   oxygencursors
3255   plasma-dataengines-addons
3256   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3257   plasma-widget-lancelot
3258   plasma-widgets-addons
3259   plasma-widgets-workspace
3260   polkit-kde-1
3261   ruby1.8
3262   systemsettings
3263   update-notifier-common
3264 </p></blockquote>
3265
3266 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3267 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3268 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3269 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3270
3271       </div>
3272       <div class="tags">
3273
3274
3275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3276
3277
3278       </div>
3279     </div>
3280     <div class="padding"></div>
3281
3282     <div class="entry">
3283       <div class="title">
3284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
3285       </div>
3286       <div class="date">
3287         27th November 2010
3288       </div>
3289       <div class="body">
3290         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3291 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3292 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3293 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3294 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
3295 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3296 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3297 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
3298
3299 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3300 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3301 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
3302 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3303 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3304 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
3305 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
3306 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3307 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
3308 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3309 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
3310
3311 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3312 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3313 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
3314 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3315 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
3316 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3317 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3318 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3319 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3320 what is going on.</p>
3321
3322       </div>
3323       <div class="tags">
3324
3325
3326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3327
3328
3329       </div>
3330     </div>
3331     <div class="padding"></div>
3332
3333     <div class="entry">
3334       <div class="title">
3335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
3336       </div>
3337       <div class="date">
3338         10th December 2010
3339       </div>
3340       <div class="body">
3341         <p>With this weeks lawless
3342 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
3343 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
3344 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
3345 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3346 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3347 A blog post from
3348 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
3349 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
3350 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
3351 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
3352 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3353 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3354 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
3355
3356 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
3357 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3358 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3359 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3360 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
3361 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3362 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3363 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
3364 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
3365 Debian</a> soon.</p>
3366
3367 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3368 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
3369 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
3370 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
3371 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
3372 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3373 you can even get
3374 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
3375 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
3376 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
3377 on the current exchange rates.</p>
3378
3379 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3380 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3381 donations to the address
3382 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
3383
3384       </div>
3385       <div class="tags">
3386
3387
3388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3389
3390
3391       </div>
3392     </div>
3393     <div class="padding"></div>
3394
3395     <div class="entry">
3396       <div class="title">
3397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
3398       </div>
3399       <div class="date">
3400         11th December 2010
3401       </div>
3402       <div class="body">
3403         <p>As I continue to explore
3404 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
3405 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
3406 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
3407
3408 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
3409 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
3410 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
3411 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
3412 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
3413 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
3414 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
3415 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
3416 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
3417 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
3418 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
3419 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
3420 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
3421 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
3422 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
3423 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
3424 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
3425 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3426 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3427 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3428
3429 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3430 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3431 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3432 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3433 If the Skolelinux foundation
3434 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3435 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3436 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3437 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
3438 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3439 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3440 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3441 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3442
3443 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3444 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3445 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3446 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3447 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3448 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3449 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3450 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3451 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3452 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3453 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
3454 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3455 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3456 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3457 currencies.</p>
3458
3459 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3460 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3461 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3462 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
3463 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3464 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3465 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3466 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3467 BitCoins.  Check out
3468 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
3469 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
3470 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3471 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3472 yet.</p>
3473
3474 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
3475 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
3476 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3477 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
3478 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
3479
3480       </div>
3481       <div class="tags">
3482
3483
3484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3485
3486
3487       </div>
3488     </div>
3489     <div class="padding"></div>
3490
3491     <div class="entry">
3492       <div class="title">
3493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
3494       </div>
3495       <div class="date">
3496         22nd December 2010
3497       </div>
3498       <div class="body">
3499         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
3500 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
3501 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
3502 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
3503 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
3504 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
3505 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
3506 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
3507 university.</p>
3508
3509 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
3510 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
3511 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
3512 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
3513 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
3514 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
3515 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
3516 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
3517
3518 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
3519 I perform on a new model.</p>
3520
3521 <ul>
3522
3523 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
3524 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
3525 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
3526
3527 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
3528 installation, X.org is working.</li>
3529
3530 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
3531 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
3532 reported by the program.</li>
3533
3534 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
3535 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
3536 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
3537 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
3538 normally test this by playing
3539 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
3540 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
3541
3542 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
3543 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3544
3545 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
3546 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3547
3548 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
3549 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
3550
3551 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
3552 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
3553 few.</li>
3554
3555 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
3556 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
3557 notice this.</li>
3558
3559 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
3560 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
3561 resume.</li>
3562
3563 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
3564 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
3565 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
3566 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
3567 not.</li>
3568
3569 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
3570 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
3571 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
3572 existence.</li>
3573
3574 </ul>
3575
3576 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
3577 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
3578 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
3579 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
3580 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
3581 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
3582 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
3583 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
3584
3585       </div>
3586       <div class="tags">
3587
3588
3589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3590
3591
3592       </div>
3593     </div>
3594     <div class="padding"></div>
3595
3596     <div class="entry">
3597       <div class="title">
3598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
3599       </div>
3600       <div class="date">
3601         23rd January 2011
3602       </div>
3603       <div class="body">
3604         <p>In the
3605 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
3606 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
3607 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
3608 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
3609 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
3610 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
3611 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
3612 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
3613 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
3614 one of my machines like this:</p>
3615
3616 <pre>
3617 loaded modules:
3618 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
3619 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
3620 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
3621 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
3622 10de:03ec pata_amd
3623 10de:03f6 sata_nv
3624 1022:1103 k8temp
3625 109e:036e bttv
3626 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
3627 11ab:4364 sky2
3628 </pre>
3629
3630 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
3631 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
3632
3633 <pre>
3634 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
3635     echo loaded pci modules:
3636     (
3637         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
3638         for address in * ; do
3639             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3640                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3641                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3642                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3643                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
3644                     echo "$id $module"
3645                 fi
3646             fi
3647         done
3648     )
3649     echo
3650 fi
3651 </pre>
3652
3653 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
3654 mappings:</p>
3655
3656 <pre>
3657 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
3658     echo loaded usb modules:
3659     (
3660         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
3661         for address in * ; do
3662             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3663                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3664                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3665                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3666                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
3667                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
3668                         echo "$id $module"
3669                     fi
3670                 fi
3671             fi
3672         done
3673     )
3674     echo
3675 fi
3676 </pre>
3677
3678 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
3679 well.</p>
3680
3681       </div>
3682       <div class="tags">
3683
3684
3685         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3686
3687
3688       </div>
3689     </div>
3690     <div class="padding"></div>
3691
3692     <div class="entry">
3693       <div class="title">
3694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
3695       </div>
3696       <div class="date">
3697         28th January 2011
3698       </div>
3699       <div class="body">
3700         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
3701 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
3702 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
3703 available on the Internet, and check our locally
3704 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
3705 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
3706 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
3707 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
3708 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
3709 out which security holes were present in our free software
3710 collection.</p>
3711
3712 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
3713 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
3714 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
3715 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
3716 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
3717 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
3718 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
3719 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
3720 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
3721 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
3722 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
3723 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
3724 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
3725 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
3726 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
3727 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
3728
3729 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
3730 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
3731 check out, one could look up
3732 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
3733 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
3734 The most recent one is
3735 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
3736 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
3737 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
3738
3739 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
3740 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
3741 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
3742 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
3743 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
3744 security issues out.</p>
3745
3746 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
3747 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
3748 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
3749 RHEL is providing
3750 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
3751 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
3752 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
3753
3754 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
3755 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
3756 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
3757 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
3758 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
3759 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
3760 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
3761 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
3762 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
3763 established soon.</p>
3764
3765 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
3766 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
3767 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
3768 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
3769 for their packages.</p>
3770
3771       </div>
3772       <div class="tags">
3773
3774
3775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3776
3777
3778       </div>
3779     </div>
3780     <div class="padding"></div>
3781
3782     <div class="entry">
3783       <div class="title">
3784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="date">
3787          3rd April 2011
3788       </div>
3789       <div class="body">
3790         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
3791 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
3792 update in English.</p>
3793
3794 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
3795 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
3796 of the British service
3797 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
3798 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
3799 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
3800 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
3801 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
3802 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
3803 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
3804 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
3805 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
3806 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
3807 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
3808 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
3809 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
3810
3811 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
3812 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
3813 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
3814 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
3815 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
3816 public infrastructure.</p>
3817
3818 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
3819 such service?</p>
3820
3821       </div>
3822       <div class="tags">
3823
3824
3825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
3826
3827
3828       </div>
3829     </div>
3830     <div class="padding"></div>
3831
3832     <div class="entry">
3833       <div class="title">
3834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
3835       </div>
3836       <div class="date">
3837         26th July 2011
3838       </div>
3839       <div class="body">
3840         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
3841 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
3842 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
3843 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
3844 security support for a few years.</p>
3845
3846 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
3847 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
3848 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
3849 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
3850 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
3851 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
3852 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
3853 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
3854 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
3855 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
3856 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
3857 easier in the future.</p>
3858
3859 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
3860 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
3861 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
3862 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
3863 do not have time for.</p>
3864
3865       </div>
3866       <div class="tags">
3867
3868
3869         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
3870
3871
3872       </div>
3873     </div>
3874     <div class="padding"></div>
3875
3876     <div class="entry">
3877       <div class="title">
3878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
3879       </div>
3880       <div class="date">
3881         29th July 2011
3882       </div>
3883       <div class="body">
3884         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
3885 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
3886 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
3887 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
3888 issues.</p>
3889
3890 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
3891 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
3892 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
3893
3894 <ol>
3895
3896 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
3897 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
3898 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
3899 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
3900 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
3901 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
3902 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
3903 Debian.</li>
3904
3905 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
3906 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
3907 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
3908 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
3909 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
3910 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
3911 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
3912 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
3913 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
3914 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
3915 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
3916 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
3917 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
3918
3919 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
3920 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
3921 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
3922 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
3923 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
3924 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
3925 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
3926 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
3927 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
3928 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
3929
3930 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
3931 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
3932 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
3933 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
3934 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
3935 latter behaviour.</li>
3936
3937 </ol>
3938
3939 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
3940 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
3941 it do not matter much.</p>
3942
3943 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
3944 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
3945 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
3946
3947       </div>
3948       <div class="tags">
3949
3950
3951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3952
3953
3954       </div>
3955     </div>
3956     <div class="padding"></div>
3957
3958     <div class="entry">
3959       <div class="title">
3960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
3961       </div>
3962       <div class="date">
3963         30th July 2011
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="body">
3966         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
3967 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
3968 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
3969 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
3970 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
3971 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
3972 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
3973 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
3974 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
3975 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
3976 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
3977 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
3978 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
3979
3980 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
3981 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
3982 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
3983 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
3984 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
3985 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
3986 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
3987 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
3988 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
3989
3990 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
3991 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
3992 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
3993 is presented.</p>
3994
3995 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
3996 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
3997 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
3998 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
3999 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4000 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4001 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4002 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
4003 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4004 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4005 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4006 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
4007 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4008 find time to push this forward.</p>
4009
4010       </div>
4011       <div class="tags">
4012
4013
4014         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4015
4016
4017       </div>
4018     </div>
4019     <div class="padding"></div>
4020
4021     <div class="entry">
4022       <div class="title">
4023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
4024       </div>
4025       <div class="date">
4026          4th August 2011
4027       </div>
4028       <div class="body">
4029         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4030 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4031 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4032 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4033 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4034 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4035 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4036 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4037 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4038
4039 <p><blockquote>
4040 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4041 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4042 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4043 </blockquote></p>
4044
4045 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4046 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4047 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4048 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4049 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4050 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4051 hard to explain.</p>
4052
4053 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4054 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
4055 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
4056 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4057 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4058 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4059 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4060 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4061 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4062 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4063 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4064 mode).</p>
4065
4066 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
4067 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4068 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
4069 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4070 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
4071 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
4072 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4073 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4074 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4075
4076 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4077 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
4078 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4079 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4080 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4081 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4082 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4083 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4084
4085 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4086 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
4087 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4088
4089       </div>
4090       <div class="tags">
4091
4092
4093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4094
4095
4096       </div>
4097     </div>
4098     <div class="padding"></div>
4099
4100     <div class="entry">
4101       <div class="title">
4102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
4103       </div>
4104       <div class="date">
4105         21st November 2011
4106       </div>
4107       <div class="body">
4108         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
4109 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
4110 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4111 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
4112 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4113 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4114 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4115 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4116 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4117 the tools to do so.</p>
4118
4119 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4120 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
4121 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4122 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
4123
4124 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4125 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
4126 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4127 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4128 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4129 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4130 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4131 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
4132
4133 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4134 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4135 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
4136
4137 <p><pre>
4138 #!/usr/bin/perl
4139 use strict;
4140 use warnings;
4141 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4142 BEGIN {
4143     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4144     my %rhelmodules = (
4145         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
4146         );
4147     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4148         eval "use $module;";
4149         if ($@) {
4150             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4151             system("yum install -y $pkg");
4152             eval "use $module;";
4153         }
4154     }
4155 }
4156 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4157
4158 upgrade_dell();
4159
4160 exit 0;
4161
4162 sub run_firmware_script {
4163     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4164     unless ($script) {
4165         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4166         exit 1
4167     }
4168     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4169
4170     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4171         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4172     } else {
4173         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4174     }
4175 }
4176
4177 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4178     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4179     # Run firmware packages
4180     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4181         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4182         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4183         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4184             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4185             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4186         }
4187         closedir $dh;
4188     }
4189 }
4190
4191 sub download {
4192     my $url = shift;
4193     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4194     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4195 }
4196
4197 sub upgrade_dell {
4198     my @dirs;
4199     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4200     chomp $product;
4201
4202     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4203
4204         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4205         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4206
4207         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4208             CLEANUP => 1
4209             );
4210         chdir($tmpdir);
4211         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4212         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4213         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4214         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4215         my $fwopts = "-q";
4216         if (@paths) {
4217             for my $url (@paths) {
4218                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4219             }
4220             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4221         } else {
4222             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4223             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4224         }
4225         chdir('/');
4226     } else {
4227         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4228         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4229     }
4230 }
4231
4232 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4233     my $path = shift;
4234     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4235     download($url);
4236 }
4237
4238 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4239 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4240 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4241 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4242     my $filename = shift;
4243
4244     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4245     chomp $product;
4246     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4247
4248     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4249
4250     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4251     my @paths;
4252     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4253         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4254         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4255         my $oscode;
4256         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4257             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4258         } else {
4259             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4260         }
4261         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4262         {
4263             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4264         }
4265     }
4266     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4267         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4268
4269         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4270         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4271
4272         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4273         for my $path (@paths) {
4274             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4275                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4276             }
4277         }
4278     }
4279     return @paths;
4280 }
4281 </pre>
4282
4283 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4284 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4285 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4286 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4287 outdated.</p>
4288
4289       </div>
4290       <div class="tags">
4291
4292
4293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4294
4295
4296       </div>
4297     </div>
4298     <div class="padding"></div>
4299
4300     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
4301     <div id="sidebar">
4302
4303
4304
4305 <h2>Archive</h2>
4306 <ul>
4307
4308 <li>2012
4309 <ul>
4310
4311 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
4312
4313 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
4314
4315 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
4316
4317 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
4318
4319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (11)</a></li>
4320
4321 </ul></li>
4322
4323 <li>2011
4324 <ul>
4325
4326 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
4327
4328 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
4329
4330 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
4331
4332 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
4333
4334 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
4335
4336 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
4337
4338 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
4339
4340 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4341
4342 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
4343
4344 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4345
4346 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4347
4348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
4349
4350 </ul></li>
4351
4352 <li>2010
4353 <ul>
4354
4355 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
4356
4357 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
4358
4359 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
4360
4361 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
4362
4363 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4364
4365 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
4366
4367 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
4368
4369 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
4370
4371 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
4372
4373 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
4374
4375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
4376
4377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
4378
4379 </ul></li>
4380
4381 <li>2009
4382 <ul>
4383
4384 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
4385
4386 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
4387
4388 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
4389
4390 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
4391
4392 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4393
4394 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
4395
4396 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
4397
4398 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
4399
4400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
4401
4402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4403
4404 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4405
4406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
4407
4408 </ul></li>
4409
4410 <li>2008
4411 <ul>
4412
4413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
4414
4415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
4416
4417 </ul></li>
4418
4419 </ul>
4420
4421
4422
4423 <h2>Tags</h2>
4424 <ul>
4425
4426  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
4427
4428  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
4429
4430  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
4431
4432  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
4433
4434  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
4435
4436  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
4437
4438  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (54)</a></li>
4439
4440  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (102)</a></li>
4441
4442  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (8)</a></li>
4443
4444  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (129)</a></li>
4445
4446  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (15)</a></li>
4447
4448  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
4449
4450  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (26)</a></li>
4451
4452  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (16)</a></li>
4453
4454  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
4455
4456  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
4457
4458  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
4459
4460  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (16)</a></li>
4461
4462  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (167)</a></li>
4463
4464  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (127)</a></li>
4465
4466  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
4467
4468  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (24)</a></li>
4469
4470  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (47)</a></li>
4471
4472  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
4473
4474  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
4475
4476  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
4477
4478  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
4479
4480  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
4481
4482  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
4483
4484  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (1)</a></li>
4485
4486  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
4487
4488  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
4489
4490  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (29)</a></li>
4491
4492  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
4493
4494  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (4)</a></li>
4495
4496  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (9)</a></li>
4497
4498  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (6)</a></li>
4499
4500  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (25)</a></li>
4501
4502  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
4503
4504  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (19)</a></li>
4505
4506 </ul>
4507
4508
4509     </div>
4510     <p style="text-align: right">
4511  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
4512 </p>
4513
4514   </body>
4515 </html>