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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 "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          1st October 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
  32 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
  33 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
  34 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
  35 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
  36 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
  37 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
  38 French translation available from the
  39 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
  40 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
  41 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
  42 to create the Norwegian translation the the English edition.  We meet
  43 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
  44 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
  45 edition, check out
  46 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
  47 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
  48 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
  49 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
  50
  51       </div>
  52       <div class="tags">
  53
  54
  55         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
  56
  57
  58       </div>
  59     </div>
  60     <div class="padding"></div>
  61
  62     <div class="entry">
  63       <div class="title">
  64         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
  65       </div>
  66       <div class="date">
  67         24th September 2015
  68       </div>
  69       <div class="body">
  70         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
  71 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
  72 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
  73 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
  74 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
  75 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
  76 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
  77
  78 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
  79
  80 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
  81 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
  82 by someone else.  I found
  83 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
  84 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
  85 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
  86 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
  87 from him.  Via
  88 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
  89 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
  90 discovered
  91 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
  92 available in Debian.</p>
  93
  94 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
  95 battery stats ever since. Now my
  96 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
  97 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
  98 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
  99 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 100
 101 <pre>
 102 #!/bin/sh
 103 # Inspired by
 104 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 105 # See also
 106 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 107 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 108
 109 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 110     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 111
 112 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 113     (
 114         printf "timestamp,"
 115         for f in $files; do
 116             printf "%s," $f
 117         done
 118         echo
 119     ) > "$logfile"
 120 fi
 121
 122 log_battery() {
 123     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 124     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 125     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 126         for f in $files; do \
 127             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 128         done)
 129     echo "$msg"
 130 }
 131
 132 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 133
 134 for bat in BAT*; do
 135     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 136 done
 137 </pre>
 138
 139 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 140 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 141 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 142 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 143 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 144 The code for the Debian package
 145 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 146 available on github</a>.</p>
 147
 148 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 149
 150 <pre>
 151 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 152 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 153 [...]
 154 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 155 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 156 </pre>
 157
 158 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 159 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 160 battery.</p>
 161
 162 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 163 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 164 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 165 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 166 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 167 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 168 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 169 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 170 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 171 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 172 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 173 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 174 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 175 Linux too.</p>
 176
 177 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 178 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 179 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 180 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 181 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 182 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 183 load).</p>
 184
 185 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 186 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 187 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 188 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 189 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 190 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 191 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 192 those.</p>
 193
 194 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 195 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 196 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 197 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 198 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 199 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 200 specific.</p>
 201
 202       </div>
 203       <div class="tags">
 204
 205
 206         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>.
 207
 208
 209       </div>
 210     </div>
 211     <div class="padding"></div>
 212
 213     <div class="entry">
 214       <div class="title">
 215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 216       </div>
 217       <div class="date">
 218          3rd September 2015
 219       </div>
 220       <div class="body">
 221         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 222 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 223 the
 224 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 225 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 226 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 227 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 228
 229 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 230 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 231 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 232 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 233 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 234 version.  Not only did he create a
 235 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 236 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 237 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 238 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 239 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 240 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 241 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 242 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 243 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 244 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 245
 246 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 247 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 248 current english version look like this:</p>
 249
 250 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 251
 252 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 253 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 254 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 255 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 256 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 257
 258 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 259 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 260 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 261 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 262 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 263 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 264
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="tags">
 267
 268
 269         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 270
 271
 272       </div>
 273     </div>
 274     <div class="padding"></div>
 275
 276     <div class="entry">
 277       <div class="title">
 278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="date">
 281         19th August 2015
 282       </div>
 283       <div class="body">
 284         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 285 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 286 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 287 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 288 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 289 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 290 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 291 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 292 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 293 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 294 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 295 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 296 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 297 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 298 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 299 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 300 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 301
 302 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 303 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 304 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 305 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 306 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 307 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 308
 309       </div>
 310       <div class="tags">
 311
 312
 313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 314
 315
 316       </div>
 317     </div>
 318     <div class="padding"></div>
 319
 320     <div class="entry">
 321       <div class="title">
 322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 323       </div>
 324       <div class="date">
 325          9th August 2015
 326       </div>
 327       <div class="body">
 328         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 329 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 330 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 331 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 332 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 333 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 334 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 335 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 336 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 337
 338 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 339 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 340 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 341 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 342 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 343
 344 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 345 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 346 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 347 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 348 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 349 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 350
 351 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 352 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 353 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 354 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 355 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 356 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 357 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 358 bring the prize down further.</p>
 359
 360 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 361 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 362 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 363 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 364 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 365 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 366 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 367 to the task.</p>
 368
 369 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 370 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 371 status can as usual be found on
 372 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 373 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 374 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 375 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 376 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 377 formatting.</p>
 378
 379 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 380 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 381 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 382 result in a few months.</p>
 383
 384       </div>
 385       <div class="tags">
 386
 387
 388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 389
 390
 391       </div>
 392     </div>
 393     <div class="padding"></div>
 394
 395     <div class="entry">
 396       <div class="title">
 397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 398       </div>
 399       <div class="date">
 400         16th July 2015
 401       </div>
 402       <div class="body">
 403         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 404 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 405 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 406 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 407 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 408 chapter.  Based on the
 409 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 410 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 411 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 412 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 413 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 414 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 415 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 416 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 417
 418 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 419 and add this text there:</p>
 420
 421 <pre>
 422 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 423 </pre>
 424
 425 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 426 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 427 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 428
 429 <pre>
 430 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 431 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 432   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 433     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 434 \usepackage{endnotes}
 435 \let\footnote=\endnote
 436 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 437 \begin{document}
 438     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 439   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 440 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 441 </pre>
 442
 443 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 444 this:</p>
 445
 446 <pre>
 447 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 448 </pre>
 449
 450 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 451 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 452 book project</a> is located.</p>
 453
 454       </div>
 455       <div class="tags">
 456
 457
 458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 459
 460
 461       </div>
 462     </div>
 463     <div class="padding"></div>
 464
 465     <div class="entry">
 466       <div class="title">
 467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 468       </div>
 469       <div class="date">
 470          7th July 2015
 471       </div>
 472       <div class="body">
 473         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 474 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 475 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 476 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 477 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 478 does not.</p>
 479
 480 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 481 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 482 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 483 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 484
 485 <p><blockquote>
 486
 487 <p>According to
 488 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 489 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 490 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 491 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 492 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 493 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 494
 495 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 496 PDF named
 497 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 498 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 499 fees:</p>
 500
 501 <ul>
 502  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 503   <ul>
 504    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 505      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 506      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 507      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 508
 509    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 510      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 511   </ul></li>
 512
 513  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 514   <ul>
 515    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 516      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 517      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 518
 519    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 520      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 521   </ul></li>
 522 </ul>
 523
 524 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 525 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 526 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 527 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 528 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 529 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 530
 531 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 532 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 533 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 534 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 535 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 536 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 537 access to personalized services?</p>
 538
 539 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 540 Internet.</p>
 541 </blockquote></p>
 542
 543 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 544 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 545
 546 <p><blockquote>
 547 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 548 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 549
 550 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 551 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 552 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 553 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 554 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 555 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 556 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 557
 558 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 559 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 560 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 561 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 562 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 563 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 564 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 565 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 566 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 567 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 568 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 569 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 570
 571 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 572 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 573 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 574 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 575 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 576 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 577 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 578
 579 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 580 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 581 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 582 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 583
 584 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 585 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 586 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 587 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 588 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 589 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 590 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 591 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 592 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 593 be used for execution.</p>
 594
 595 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 596 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 597 free to contact me directly.</p>
 598 </blockquote></p>
 599
 600 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 601 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 602 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 603 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 604
 605 <p><blockquote>
 606 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 607 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 608 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 609 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 610 typically look similar to this:
 611
 612 <p><blockquote>
 613   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 614   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 615   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 616   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 617   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 618   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 619   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 620   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 621 </blockquote></p>
 622
 623 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 624 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 625 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 626 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 627 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 628 </blockquote></p>
 629
 630 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 631 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 632
 633 <p><blockquote>
 634
 635 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 636 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 637 reads:</p>
 638
 639 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 640 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 641 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 642 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 643 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 644 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 645 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 646 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 647
 648 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 649 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 650 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 651 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 652 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 653 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 654 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 655 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 656
 657 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 658 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 659 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 660 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 661 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 662 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 663 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 664 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 665 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 666
 667 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 668 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 669 Norway.</p>
 670
 671 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 672 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 673 </blockquote></p>
 674
 675 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 676 asked for more information:</p>
 677
 678 <p><blockquote>
 679
 680 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 681 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 682 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 683 list available from &lt;URL:
 684 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 685 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 686 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 687 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 688 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 689
 690 </blockquote></p>
 691
 692 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 693 in that list:</p>
 694
 695 <p><blockquote>
 696
 697 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 698 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 699 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 700 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 701 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 702 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 703 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 704 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 705 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 706
 707 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 708 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 709 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 710 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 711 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 712 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 713 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 714 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 715 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 716 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 717 </blockquote></p>
 718
 719 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 720 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 721 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 722 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 723 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 724 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 725 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 726 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 727 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 728
 729       </div>
 730       <div class="tags">
 731
 732
 733         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 734
 735
 736       </div>
 737     </div>
 738     <div class="padding"></div>
 739
 740     <div class="entry">
 741       <div class="title">
 742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 743       </div>
 744       <div class="date">
 745          5th July 2015
 746       </div>
 747       <div class="body">
 748         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 749 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 750 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 751 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 752 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 753 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 754 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 755 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 756 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 757 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 758 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 759
 760 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 761 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 762 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 763 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 764 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 765 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 766 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 767
 768 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 769 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 770 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 771 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 772 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 773 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 774 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 775 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 776 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 777 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 778 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 779 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 780 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 781 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 782 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 783
 784 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 785 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 786 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 787 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 788
 789 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 790 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 791
 792 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 793 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 794 different
 795 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 796 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 797
 798       </div>
 799       <div class="tags">
 800
 801
 802         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>.
 803
 804
 805       </div>
 806     </div>
 807     <div class="padding"></div>
 808
 809     <div class="entry">
 810       <div class="title">
 811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 812       </div>
 813       <div class="date">
 814          3rd July 2015
 815       </div>
 816       <div class="body">
 817         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 818 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 819 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 820 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 821 flickering.</p>
 822
 823 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 824 still as
 825 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 826 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 827 good help from
 828 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 829 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 830 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 831 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 832 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 833 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 834 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 835 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 836 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 837
 838 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 839 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 840 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 841 have suggestions.</p>
 842
 843 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 844 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 845 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 846
 847       </div>
 848       <div class="tags">
 849
 850
 851         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>.
 852
 853
 854       </div>
 855     </div>
 856     <div class="padding"></div>
 857
 858     <div class="entry">
 859       <div class="title">
 860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="date">
 863          2nd July 2015
 864       </div>
 865       <div class="body">
 866         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
 867 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
 868 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
 869 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
 870 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
 871 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
 872 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
 873 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
 874 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
 875 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
 876 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
 877 Youtube too</a>.</p>
 878
 879 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
 880 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
 881 pages</a> to view them.</p>
 882
 883 <ul>
 884
 885   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
 886       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
 887
 888   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
 889
 890   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
 891       (Olav Helland)</li>
 892
 893   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
 894       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
 895
 896   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
 897
 898   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
 899
 900   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
 901       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
 902
 903   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
 904
 905   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
 906
 907   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
 908
 909   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
 910
 911   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
 912       Sevens)</li>
 913
 914   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
 915       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
 916
 917   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
 918       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
 919
 920   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
 921       Dyvik)</li>
 922
 923   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
 924
 925 </ul>
 926
 927 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
 928 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
 929 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
 930 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
 931 which sent me on a detour to
 932 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
 933 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
 934 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 935
 936       </div>
 937       <div class="tags">
 938
 939
 940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 941
 942
 943       </div>
 944     </div>
 945     <div class="padding"></div>
 946
 947     <div class="entry">
 948       <div class="title">
 949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="date">
 952         15th June 2015
 953       </div>
 954       <div class="body">
 955         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 956 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 957 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 958 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 959 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 960 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 961 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 962 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
 963 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
 964
 965 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
 966 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
 967 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
 968 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
 969
 970 <pre>
 971 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
 972
 973 real    0m2.841s
 974 user    0m0.184s
 975 sys     0m0.036s
 976 %
 977 </pre>
 978
 979 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
 980 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
 981 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
 982 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
 983 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
 984
 985 <pre>
 986 digraph ownership {
 987 rankdir = LR;
 988 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
 989 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
 990 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
 991 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
 992 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
 993 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
 994 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
 995 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
 996 }
 997 </pre>
 998
 999 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
1000 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
1001 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
1002
1003 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
1004
1005 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
1006 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
1007 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
1008 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
1009 of the ownership links.</p>
1010
1011 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
1012 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
1013
1014 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
1015 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
1016 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
1017 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
1018 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
1019 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
1020 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
1021
1022       </div>
1023       <div class="tags">
1024
1025
1026         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1027
1028
1029       </div>
1030     </div>
1031     <div class="padding"></div>
1032
1033     <div class="entry">
1034       <div class="title">
1035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
1036       </div>
1037       <div class="date">
1038         11th June 2015
1039       </div>
1040       <div class="body">
1041         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
1042 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
1043 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
1044 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
1045 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
1046 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1047 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1048 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1049 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1050 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1051 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1052 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1053 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1054
1055 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1056 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1057 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1058 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1059 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1060 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1061 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1062 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1063 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1064 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1065
1066 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1067 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1068 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1069 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1070 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1071 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1072 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1073 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1074 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1075
1076 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1077 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1078 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1079 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1080 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1081 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1082 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1083 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1084 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1085 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1086 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1087
1088       </div>
1089       <div class="tags">
1090
1091
1092         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1093
1094
1095       </div>
1096     </div>
1097     <div class="padding"></div>
1098
1099     <div class="entry">
1100       <div class="title">
1101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1102       </div>
1103       <div class="date">
1104         10th May 2015
1105       </div>
1106       <div class="body">
1107         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1108 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1109 criminal or not, are
1110 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1111 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1112 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1113 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1114 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1115 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1116 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1117 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1118 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1119 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1120 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1121 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1122 the police.</p>
1123
1124 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1125 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1126 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1127 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1128 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1129 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1130 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1131 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1132 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1133 is good to know that
1134 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1135 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1136 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1137 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1138 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1139 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1140 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1141 business getting access to that information.</p>
1142
1143 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1144 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1145 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1146 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1147 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1148 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1149 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1150
1151 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1152 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1153 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1154 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1155
1156 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1157 really could make such decision, I wrote
1158 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1159 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1160 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1161
1162       </div>
1163       <div class="tags">
1164
1165
1166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1167
1168
1169       </div>
1170     </div>
1171     <div class="padding"></div>
1172
1173     <div class="entry">
1174       <div class="title">
1175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1176       </div>
1177       <div class="date">
1178          1st May 2015
1179       </div>
1180       <div class="body">
1181         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1182 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1183 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1184 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1185 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1186 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1187 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1188
1189 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1190 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1191 the 2012 numbers are from
1192 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1193 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1194 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1195 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1196 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1197
1198 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1199 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1200 enough.  See for example a
1201 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1202 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1203 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1204 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1205
1206 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1207 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1208 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1209 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1210 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1211
1212 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1213 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1214 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1215 and large organisations:</p>
1216
1217 <table border="1">
1218 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1219 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1220 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1221 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1222 </table>
1223
1224 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1225 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1226 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1227 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1228 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1229 collecting the data?</p>
1230
1231       </div>
1232       <div class="tags">
1233
1234
1235         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1236
1237
1238       </div>
1239     </div>
1240     <div class="padding"></div>
1241
1242     <div class="entry">
1243       <div class="title">
1244         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1245       </div>
1246       <div class="date">
1247         26th April 2015
1248       </div>
1249       <div class="body">
1250         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1251 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1252 announcement today</a>:</p>
1253
1254 <pre>
1255 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1256 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1257 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1258 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1259
1260 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1261 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1262 later today ;)
1263
1264 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1265 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1266 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1267 be possible and encouraged!
1268
1269 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1270 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1271
1272 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1273 operating system for schools, universities and other
1274 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1275 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1276 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1277 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1278 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1279 days.
1280
1281 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1282 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1283 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1284 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1285
1286 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1287 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1288 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1289 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1290 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1291 least 5 characters!
1292
1293 == Where to download ==
1294
1295 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1296 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1297
1298     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1299     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1300
1301 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1302
1303 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1304 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1305 time):
1306
1307     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1308     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1309
1310 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1311
1312 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1313 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1314 options.
1315
1316 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1317
1318 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1319 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1320
1321 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1322 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1323 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1324 online version of the translated manual.
1325
1326 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1327 release notes and the installation manual:
1328 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1329 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1330
1331
1332 == Errata / known problems ==
1333
1334     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1335     DHCP (#780461).
1336
1337     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1338
1339 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1340 hostname immediately.
1341
1342 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1343 more current and complete list.
1344
1345 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1346
1347 === Software updates ===
1348
1349 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1350
1351  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1352    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1353    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1354
1355  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1356    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1357    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1358    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1359      the others see the manual.
1360  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1361  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1362  * GOsa 2.7.4
1363  * LTSP 5.5.4
1364  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1365  * new boot framework: systemd
1366  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1367  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1368  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1369  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1370  * golearn 0.9
1371  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1372  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1373  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1374  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1375    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1376
1377 === Installation changes ===
1378
1379     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1380     for the hardware present.
1381
1382 === Fixed bugs ===
1383
1384 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1385 from a user perspective:
1386
1387  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1388    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1389    information is corrected (710362)
1390
1391  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1392
1393 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1394
1395 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1396 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1397
1398
1399 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1400
1401 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1402 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1403 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1404 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1405 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1406 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1407 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1408 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1409 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1410 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1411 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1412 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1413 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1414 environment.
1415
1416 == About Debian ==
1417
1418 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1419 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1420 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1421 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1422 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1423 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1424 operating system.
1425
1426 == Thanks ==
1427
1428 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1429 You rock.
1430 </pre>
1431
1432       </div>
1433       <div class="tags">
1434
1435
1436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1437
1438
1439       </div>
1440     </div>
1441     <div class="padding"></div>
1442
1443     <div class="entry">
1444       <div class="title">
1445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1446       </div>
1447       <div class="date">
1448         15th April 2015
1449       </div>
1450       <div class="body">
1451         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1452 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1453 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1454 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1455 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1456 Agarwal.</p>
1457
1458 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1459
1460 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1461 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1462 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1463 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1464 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1465 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1466
1467 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1468 project?</strong></p>
1469
1470 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1471 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1472 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1473 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1474 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1475 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1476 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1477
1478 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1479 Edu?</strong></p>
1480
1481 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1482 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1483 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1484 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1485 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1486 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1487 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1488 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1489
1490 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1491 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1492 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1493 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1494 for the developer per-se.</p>
1495
1496 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1497 Edu?</strong></p>
1498
1499 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1500 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1501 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1502
1503 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1504 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1505 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1506 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1507 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1508 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1509 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1510
1511 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1512 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1513 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1514
1515 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1516 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1517 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1518 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1519 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1520 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1521 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1522 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1523 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1524 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1525 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1526 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1527 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1528 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1529
1530 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1531 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1532 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1533 also be used.</p>
1534
1535 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1536 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1537 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1538 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1539 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1540 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1541 the user's input.</p>
1542
1543 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1544 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1545 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1546 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1547 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1548 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1549 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1550 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1551
1552 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1553 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1554 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1555 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1556 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1557 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1558 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1559 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1560
1561 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1562
1563 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1564 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1565 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1566 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1567 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1568
1569 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1570 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1571
1572 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1573 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1574 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1575 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1576 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1577 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1578
1579 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1580 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1581 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1582 well.</p>
1583
1584 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1585 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1586 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1587 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1588
1589 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1590 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1591 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1592 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1593 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1594 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1595 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1596 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1597 releases.</p>
1598
1599 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1600 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1601 is aimed at.
1602
1603 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1604 around 2 years, and
1605 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1606 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1607 there was :</p>
1608
1609 <ol>
1610
1611   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1612    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1613    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1614
1615   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1616    is in the syllabus.</li>
1617
1618   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1619    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1620    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1621    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1622    as recognizable as say a
1623    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1624    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1625    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1626    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1627    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1628    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1629
1630 </ol>
1631
1632       </div>
1633       <div class="tags">
1634
1635
1636         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1637
1638
1639       </div>
1640     </div>
1641     <div class="padding"></div>
1642
1643     <div class="entry">
1644       <div class="title">
1645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1646       </div>
1647       <div class="date">
1648          7th April 2015
1649       </div>
1650       <div class="body">
1651         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1652 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1653 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1654
1655 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1656 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1657 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1658 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1659 part of my involvement with the
1660 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1661 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1662 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1663 Hackathon with our friends
1664 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1665 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1666 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1667 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1668
1669 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1670 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1671
1672       </div>
1673       <div class="tags">
1674
1675
1676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1677
1678
1679       </div>
1680     </div>
1681     <div class="padding"></div>
1682
1683     <div class="entry">
1684       <div class="title">
1685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="date">
1688          4th April 2015
1689       </div>
1690       <div class="body">
1691         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1692 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1693 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1694 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1695 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1696 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1697 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1698 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1699 project pages.  You can also check out the
1700 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1701 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1702 and HTML version available in the
1703 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1704 directory</a>.</p>
1705
1706 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1707 you find any.</p>
1708
1709       </div>
1710       <div class="tags">
1711
1712
1713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1714
1715
1716       </div>
1717     </div>
1718     <div class="padding"></div>
1719
1720     <div class="entry">
1721       <div class="title">
1722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="date">
1725          9th March 2015
1726       </div>
1727       <div class="body">
1728         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1729 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1730 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1731 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1732 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1733 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1734 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1735 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1736 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1737 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1738 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1739 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1740 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1741 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1742
1743 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1744 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1745 include things like a
1746 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1747 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1748 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1749 re-implementation</a>, the
1750 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1751 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1752 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1753 video</A> and many others.</p>
1754
1755 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1756 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1757 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1758 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1759 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1760 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1761 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1762 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1763 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1764 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1765
1766 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1767 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1768 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1769 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1770 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1771 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1772 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1773 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1774 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1775 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1776
1777       </div>
1778       <div class="tags">
1779
1780
1781         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1782
1783
1784       </div>
1785     </div>
1786     <div class="padding"></div>
1787
1788     <div class="entry">
1789       <div class="title">
1790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1791       </div>
1792       <div class="date">
1793         28th February 2015
1794       </div>
1795       <div class="body">
1796         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1797 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1798 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1799 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1800 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1801 made for
1802 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1803 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1804 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1805 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1806 a friend have
1807 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1808 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1809 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1810 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1811 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1812 it happen ourselves.
1813 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1814 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1815 is.</p>
1816
1817 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1818 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1819
1820       </div>
1821       <div class="tags">
1822
1823
1824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1825
1826
1827       </div>
1828     </div>
1829     <div class="padding"></div>
1830
1831     <div class="entry">
1832       <div class="title">
1833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="date">
1836         25th February 2015
1837       </div>
1838       <div class="body">
1839         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1840 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1841 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1842 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1843 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1844 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1845 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1846 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1847 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1848 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1849 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1850 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1851 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1852 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1853 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1854 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1855 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1856
1857 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1858 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1859 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1860 with VLC.</p>
1861
1862 <ul>
1863   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1864   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1865 </ul>
1866
1867 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1868 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1869 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1870 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1871 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1872 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1873 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1874
1875 <blockquote><pre>
1876 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1877  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1878  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1879 </pre></blockquote>
1880
1881 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1882 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1883 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1884 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1885
1886       </div>
1887       <div class="tags">
1888
1889
1890         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1891
1892
1893       </div>
1894     </div>
1895     <div class="padding"></div>
1896
1897     <div class="entry">
1898       <div class="title">
1899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1900       </div>
1901       <div class="date">
1902         10th February 2015
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="body">
1905         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1906 that
1907 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1908 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1909 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1910 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1911 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1912 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1913 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1914 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1915 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1916 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1917 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1918 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1919 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1920 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1921 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1922
1923 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1924 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1925 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1926 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1927
1928 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1929 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1930 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1931
1932       </div>
1933       <div class="tags">
1934
1935
1936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
1937
1938
1939       </div>
1940     </div>
1941     <div class="padding"></div>
1942
1943     <div class="entry">
1944       <div class="title">
1945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
1946       </div>
1947       <div class="date">
1948          8th February 2015
1949       </div>
1950       <div class="body">
1951         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1952 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1953 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1954 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1955 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1956 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1957 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1958 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1959 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1960 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1961 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1962 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
1963
1964 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
1965 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
1966 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
1967 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
1968
1969 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
1970 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
1971 distribute the TV content.  The
1972 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
1973 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
1974 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
1975 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
1976 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
1977 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
1978 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
1979 following activity, we now have the schedule
1980 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
1981 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
1982 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
1983 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
1984
1985 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
1986 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
1987 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
1988 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
1989 streams are working as they should.</p>
1990
1991       </div>
1992       <div class="tags">
1993
1994
1995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1996
1997
1998       </div>
1999     </div>
2000     <div class="padding"></div>
2001
2002     <div class="entry">
2003       <div class="title">
2004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
2005       </div>
2006       <div class="date">
2007         12th January 2015
2008       </div>
2009       <div class="body">
2010         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
2011 Foundation</a> announced a new video
2012 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
2013 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
2014 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
2015 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
2016 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
2017 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
2018
2019 <p>But today I was told that
2020 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
2021 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
2022 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
2023 available in
2024 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
2025 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
2026 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
2027
2028 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
2029 Libreplanet
2030 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
2031 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
2032
2033       </div>
2034       <div class="tags">
2035
2036
2037         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2038
2039
2040       </div>
2041     </div>
2042     <div class="padding"></div>
2043
2044     <div class="entry">
2045       <div class="title">
2046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="date">
2049         30th December 2014
2050       </div>
2051       <div class="body">
2052         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2053 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2054 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2055 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2056 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2057 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2058 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2059 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2060 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2061 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2062 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2063
2064 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2065 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2066 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2067 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2068 reports in public.</p>
2069
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="tags">
2072
2073
2074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2075
2076
2077       </div>
2078     </div>
2079     <div class="padding"></div>
2080
2081     <div class="entry">
2082       <div class="title">
2083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="date">
2086         19th December 2014
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="body">
2089         <p>So, Sony caved in
2090 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2091 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2092 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2093 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2094 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2095 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2096 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2097 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2098 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2099 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2100 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2101 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2102 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2103
2104 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2105 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2106 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2107 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2108
2109 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2110 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2111 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2112 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2113 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2114 income. :)</p>
2115
2116       </div>
2117       <div class="tags">
2118
2119
2120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2121
2122
2123       </div>
2124     </div>
2125     <div class="padding"></div>
2126
2127     <div class="entry">
2128       <div class="title">
2129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
2130       </div>
2131       <div class="date">
2132         22nd November 2014
2133       </div>
2134       <div class="body">
2135         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2136 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2137 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2138 courtesy of
2139 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2140 Schubert</a> and
2141 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2142 McVittie</a>.
2143
2144 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2145 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2146 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2147 you upgrade:</p>
2148
2149 <p><blockquote><pre>
2150 Package: systemd-sysv
2151 Pin: release o=Debian
2152 Pin-Priority: -1
2153 </pre></blockquote><p>
2154
2155 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2156 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2157 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2158 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2159 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2160
2161 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2162 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2163 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2164 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2165 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2166 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2167
2168 <p><blockquote><pre>
2169 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2170 </pre></blockquote><p>
2171
2172 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2173
2174 <p><blockquote><pre>
2175 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2176 </pre></blockquote><p>
2177
2178 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2179 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2180
2181 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2182 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2183 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2184 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2185 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2186 Jessie is released.</p>
2187
2188 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2189 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2190 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2191 line.</p>
2192
2193       </div>
2194       <div class="tags">
2195
2196
2197         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>.
2198
2199
2200       </div>
2201     </div>
2202     <div class="padding"></div>
2203
2204     <div class="entry">
2205       <div class="title">
2206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
2207       </div>
2208       <div class="date">
2209         10th November 2014
2210       </div>
2211       <div class="body">
2212         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2213 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2214 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2215
2216 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2217 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2218 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2219 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2220 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2221 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2222 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2223 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2224 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2225 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2226 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2227 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2228 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2229 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2230 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2231
2232 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2233 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2234 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2235 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2236 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2237 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2238 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2239 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2240 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2241 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2242 were fairly easy, and
2243 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2244 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2245 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2246 useful approach.</p>
2247
2248 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2249 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2250 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2251 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2252 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2253 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2254 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2255 this:</p>
2256
2257 <p><blockquote><pre>
2258 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2259   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2260 </pre></blockquote></p>
2261
2262 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2263 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2264
2265 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2266 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2267 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2268 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2269 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2270 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2271 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2272 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2273 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2274 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2275 system.</p>
2276
2277 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2278 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2279 SMTorP. :)</p>
2280
2281       </div>
2282       <div class="tags">
2283
2284
2285         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2286
2287
2288       </div>
2289     </div>
2290     <div class="padding"></div>
2291
2292     <div class="entry">
2293       <div class="title">
2294         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2295       </div>
2296       <div class="date">
2297         27th October 2014
2298       </div>
2299       <div class="body">
2300         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2301 sent out
2302 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2303 announcement</a>:</p>
2304
2305 <pre>
2306 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2307 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2308
2309 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2310 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2311 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2312 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2313 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2314 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2315 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2316
2317 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2318 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2319 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2320 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2321 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2322 of at least 5 characters!
2323
2324  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2325
2326 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2327 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2328 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2329 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2330 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2331
2332 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2333 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2334
2335 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2336 ===============================
2337
2338 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2339 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2340 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2341 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2342 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2343 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2344 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2345 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2346 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2347 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2348 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2349 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2350 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2351 environment.
2352
2353  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2354  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2355
2356 Full release notes and manual
2357 =============================
2358
2359 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2360 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2361 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2362 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2363 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2364
2365  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2366  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2367
2368 Where to get it
2369 ---------------
2370
2371 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2372
2373  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2374  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2375  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2376
2377 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2378
2379 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2380 ===============================================================================
2381
2382
2383 Installation changes
2384 --------------------
2385
2386  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2387
2388 Software updates
2389 ----------------
2390
2391 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2392
2393  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2394  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2395    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2396    choose one of the others see manual.)
2397  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2398  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2399  * GOsa 2.7.4
2400  * LTSP 5.5.4
2401  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2402  * new boot framework: systemd
2403  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2404  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2405  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2406  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2407  * golearn 0.9
2408  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2409  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2410  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2411    installation.
2412  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2413    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2414
2415  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2416  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2417
2418 Fixed bugs
2419 ----------
2420
2421  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2422    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2423    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2424  * and many others.
2425
2426 Documentation and translation updates
2427 -------------------------------------
2428
2429  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2430    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2431    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2432
2433 Other changes
2434 -------------
2435
2436  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2437    server takes more time.
2438  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2439    doesn't work.
2440
2441 Regressions / known problems
2442 ----------------------------
2443
2444  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2445    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2446    and Debian bug #762103).
2447  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2448    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2449  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2450    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2451    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2452
2453 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2454
2455  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2456
2457 How to report bugs
2458 ------------------
2459
2460 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2461
2462 About Debian
2463 ============
2464
2465 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2466 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2467 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2468 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2469 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2470 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2471 operating system.
2472
2473 Contact Information
2474 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2475 mail to press@debian.org.
2476
2477  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2478 </pre>
2479
2480       </div>
2481       <div class="tags">
2482
2483
2484         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2485
2486
2487       </div>
2488     </div>
2489     <div class="padding"></div>
2490
2491     <div class="entry">
2492       <div class="title">
2493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2494       </div>
2495       <div class="date">
2496         23rd October 2014
2497       </div>
2498       <div class="body">
2499         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2500 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2501 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2502 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2503 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2504 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2505 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2506 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2507 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2508 live.</p>
2509
2510 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2511 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2512 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2513 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2514 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2515 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2516 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2517 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2518
2519       </div>
2520       <div class="tags">
2521
2522
2523         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2524
2525
2526       </div>
2527     </div>
2528     <div class="padding"></div>
2529
2530     <div class="entry">
2531       <div class="title">
2532         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2533       </div>
2534       <div class="date">
2535         22nd October 2014
2536       </div>
2537       <div class="body">
2538         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2539 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2540 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2541 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2542 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2543 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2544 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2545 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2546 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2547 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2548 lists I recently took over:</p>
2549
2550 <p><blockquote><pre>
2551 % time listadmin xiph
2552 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2553 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2554
2555 real    0m1.709s
2556 user    0m0.232s
2557 sys     0m0.012s
2558 %
2559 </pre></blockquote></p>
2560
2561 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2562 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2563 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2564 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2565 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2566 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2567 program.</p>
2568
2569 <p>If you install
2570 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2571 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2572 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2573
2574 <p><blockquote><pre>
2575 username username@example.org
2576 spamlevel 23
2577 default discard
2578 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2579
2580 password secret
2581 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2582 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2583
2584 password hidden
2585 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2586 </pre></blockquote></p>
2587
2588 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2589 learn the details.</p>
2590
2591 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2592 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2593 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2594 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2595
2596 <p><blockquote><pre>
2597 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2598 </pre></blockquote></p>
2599
2600 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2601 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2602 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2603 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2604 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2605 email.</p>
2606
2607 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2608 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2609 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2610 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2611 software.</p>
2612
2613 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2614 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2615 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2616
2617 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2618 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2619 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2620 sure why.</p>
2621
2622       </div>
2623       <div class="tags">
2624
2625
2626         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>.
2627
2628
2629       </div>
2630     </div>
2631     <div class="padding"></div>
2632
2633     <div class="entry">
2634       <div class="title">
2635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2636       </div>
2637       <div class="date">
2638         17th October 2014
2639       </div>
2640       <div class="body">
2641         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2642 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2643 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2644 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2645 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2646 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2647 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2648
2649 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2650 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2651 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2652 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2653 of this story.)</p>
2654
2655 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2656 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2657 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2658 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2659 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2660 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2661 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2662 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2663 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2664 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2665
2666 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2667 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2668 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2669 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2670
2671 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2672 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2673
2674 <p><blockquote><pre>
2675 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2676 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2677 </pre></blockquote></p>
2678
2679 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2680 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2681 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2682 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2683 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2684 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2685 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2686 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2687
2688 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2689 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2690
2691 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2692 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2693 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2694 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2695 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2696
2697 <p><blockquote><pre>
2698 Task: isenkram-packages
2699 Section: hardware
2700 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2701  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2702  proposed.
2703 Test-new-install: show show
2704 Relevance: 8
2705 Packages: for-current-hardware
2706
2707 Task: isenkram-firmware
2708 Section: hardware
2709 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2710  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2711  packages are proposed.
2712 Test-new-install: mark show
2713 Relevance: 8
2714 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2715 </pre></blockquote></p>
2716
2717 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2718 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2719 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2720 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2721 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2722
2723 <p><blockquote><pre>
2724 #!/bin/sh
2725 #
2726 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2727 export PATH
2728 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2729 </pre></blockquote></p>
2730
2731 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2732 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2733
2734 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2735 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2736 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2737 install.</p>
2738
2739 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2740 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2741 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2742
2743       </div>
2744       <div class="tags">
2745
2746
2747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2748
2749
2750       </div>
2751     </div>
2752     <div class="padding"></div>
2753
2754     <div class="entry">
2755       <div class="title">
2756         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
2757       </div>
2758       <div class="date">
2759          4th October 2014
2760       </div>
2761       <div class="body">
2762         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2763 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2764 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2765 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2766
2767 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2768
2769 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2770 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2771 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2772
2773       </div>
2774       <div class="tags">
2775
2776
2777         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>.
2778
2779
2780       </div>
2781     </div>
2782     <div class="padding"></div>
2783
2784     <div class="entry">
2785       <div class="title">
2786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
2787       </div>
2788       <div class="date">
2789          4th October 2014
2790       </div>
2791       <div class="body">
2792         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2793 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2794 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2795 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2796 Dibb.</p>
2797
2798 <p>I just wrapped up
2799 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2800 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2801 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2802 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2803 0.17.</p>
2804
2805 <ul>
2806
2807  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2808  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2809    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2810  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2811  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2812  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2813  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2814  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2815  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2816    the palette size is the same.</li>
2817  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2818  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2819  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2820  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2821    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2822
2823 </ul>
2824
2825 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2826 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2827 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2828
2829       </div>
2830       <div class="tags">
2831
2832
2833         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2834
2835
2836       </div>
2837     </div>
2838     <div class="padding"></div>
2839
2840     <div class="entry">
2841       <div class="title">
2842         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2843       </div>
2844       <div class="date">
2845         26th September 2014
2846       </div>
2847       <div class="body">
2848         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2849 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2850 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2851 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2852 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2853 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2854 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2855 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2856 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2857 future.  The
2858 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2859 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2860 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2861 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2862 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2863
2864 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2865 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2866 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2867 or rsync (use
2868 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2869 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2870 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2871 install with some tweaking.</p>
2872
2873 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2874 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2875
2876 <p><blockquote><pre>
2877 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2878 </pre></blockquote></p>
2879
2880 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2881 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2882 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2883 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2884
2885 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2886 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2887 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2888 your need.</p>
2889
2890 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2891 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2892 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2893 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2894 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2895 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2896 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2897 days.</p>
2898
2899 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2900 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2901 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2902 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2903 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2904 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2905 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2906 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2907 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2908
2909 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2910 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2911 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2912
2913       </div>
2914       <div class="tags">
2915
2916
2917         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>.
2918
2919
2920       </div>
2921     </div>
2922     <div class="padding"></div>
2923
2924     <div class="entry">
2925       <div class="title">
2926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
2927       </div>
2928       <div class="date">
2929         25th September 2014
2930       </div>
2931       <div class="body">
2932         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2933 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2934 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2935 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2936 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2937 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2938 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2939 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2940 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2941 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2942 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2943 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2944 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2945
2946 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2947 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2948 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2949 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2950 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2951 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2952 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2953 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2954 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2955 list</a>. :)</p>
2956
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="tags">
2959
2960
2961         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/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2962
2963
2964       </div>
2965     </div>
2966     <div class="padding"></div>
2967
2968     <div class="entry">
2969       <div class="title">
2970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="date">
2973         16th September 2014
2974       </div>
2975       <div class="body">
2976         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2977 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2978 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2979 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2980 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2981 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2982 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2983 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2984 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2985 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2986 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2987 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2988 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2989 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2990
2991 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2992 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2993 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2994 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2995 depend on the small and clever package
2996 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2997 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2998 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2999 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3000 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3001 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3002 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3003 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3004 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3005 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3006 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3007
3008 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3009 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3010 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3011 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3012 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3013 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3014 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3015 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3016 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3017 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3018 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3019 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3020 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3021 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3022 dialog.</p>
3023
3024 <p><table>
3025
3026 <tr>
3027 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3028 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3029 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3030 <th>Reduction</th>
3031 </tr>
3032
3033 <tr>
3034 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3035 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3036 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3037 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3038 </tr>
3039
3040 <tr>
3041 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3042 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3043 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3044 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3045 </tr>
3046
3047 <tr>
3048 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3049 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3050 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3051 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3052 </tr>
3053
3054 <tr>
3055 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3056 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3057 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3058 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3059 </tr>
3060
3061 <tr>
3062 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3063 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3064 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3065 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3066 </tr>
3067
3068 </table></p>
3069
3070 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3071 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3072 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3073 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3074 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3075 installed.</p>
3076
3077 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3078 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3079 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3080 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3081 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3082 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3083 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3084 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3085 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3086 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3087 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3088 for the entire installation.</p>
3089
3090 <p>I've implemented this in the
3091 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3092 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3093 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3094 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3095 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3096
3097 <p><blockquote><pre>
3098 #!/bin/sh
3099 set -e
3100 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3101 info() {
3102     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3103 }
3104 error() {
3105     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3106 }
3107 override_install() {
3108     apt-install eatmydata || true
3109     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3110         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3111             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3112             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3113             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3114                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3115                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3116                     > /target$file.edu
3117                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3118                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3119                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3120                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3121             else
3122                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3123             fi
3124         done
3125     else
3126         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3127     fi
3128 }
3129
3130 override_install
3131 </pre></blockquote></p>
3132
3133 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3134 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3135
3136 <p><blockquote><pre>
3137 #! /bin/sh -e
3138 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3139 error() {
3140     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3141 }
3142 remove_install_override() {
3143     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3144         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3145         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3146             rm /target$file
3147             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3148                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3149             rm /target$file.edu
3150         else
3151             error "Missing divert for $file."
3152         fi
3153     done
3154     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3155 }
3156
3157 remove_install_override
3158 </pre></blockquote></p>
3159
3160 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3161 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3162 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3163
3164 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3165 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3166 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3167 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3168 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3169 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3170 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3171 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3172 everyone.</p>
3173
3174 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3175 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3176 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3177 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3178
3179 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3180 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3181 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3182 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3183 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3184
3185 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3186 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3187 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3188 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3189 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3190
3191       </div>
3192       <div class="tags">
3193
3194
3195         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>.
3196
3197
3198       </div>
3199     </div>
3200     <div class="padding"></div>
3201
3202     <div class="entry">
3203       <div class="title">
3204         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
3205       </div>
3206       <div class="date">
3207         10th September 2014
3208       </div>
3209       <div class="body">
3210         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3211 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3212 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3213 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3214 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3215 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3216 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3217 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3218 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3219 those problems are gone now.</p>
3220
3221 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3222 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3223 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3224 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3225 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3226
3227 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3228 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3229 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3230
3231 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3232 line:</p>
3233
3234 <p><blockquote><pre>
3235 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3236 </pre></blockquote></p>
3237
3238 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3239 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3240 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3241 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3242
3243 <p><blockquote><pre>
3244 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3245 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3246 %
3247 </pre></blockquote></p>
3248
3249 <p>Now if only
3250 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3251 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3252 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3253 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3254 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3255 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3256 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3257 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3258 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3259
3260       </div>
3261       <div class="tags">
3262
3263
3264         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3265
3266
3267       </div>
3268     </div>
3269     <div class="padding"></div>
3270
3271     <div class="entry">
3272       <div class="title">
3273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
3274       </div>
3275       <div class="date">
3276         25th August 2014
3277       </div>
3278       <div class="body">
3279         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3280 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3281 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3282 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3283 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3284 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3285 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3286 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3287 am not sure.
3288 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3289 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3290 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3291 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3292 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3293 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3294 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3295 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3296 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3297 licenses are.</p>
3298
3299 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3300 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3301 end user</a>
3302 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3303 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3304
3305 <p><blockquote>
3306 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3307 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3308
3309 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3310 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3311 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3312 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3313 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3314 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3315 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3316 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3317 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3318 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3319 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3320 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3321 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3322 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3323 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3324 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3325 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3326 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3327
3328 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3329 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3330
3331 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3332 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3333 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3334 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3335 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3336 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3337 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3338 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3339 </blockquote></p>
3340
3341 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3342 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3343
3344 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3345 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3346
3347 <p><blockquote>
3348
3349 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3350 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3351 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3352 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3353 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3354 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3355 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3356 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3357 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3358 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3359 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3360 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3361
3362 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3363 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3364 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3365 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3366 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3367 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3368 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3369 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3370 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3371 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3372 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3373 additional details.</p>
3374
3375 </blockquote></p>
3376
3377 <p>Some free software like
3378 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3379 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3380 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3381 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3382
3383       </div>
3384       <div class="tags">
3385
3386
3387         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3388
3389
3390       </div>
3391     </div>
3392     <div class="padding"></div>
3393
3394     <div class="entry">
3395       <div class="title">
3396         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3397       </div>
3398       <div class="date">
3399         31st July 2014
3400       </div>
3401       <div class="body">
3402         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3403 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3404 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3405 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3406 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3407 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3408
3409 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3410
3411 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3412 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3413 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3414 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3415 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3416 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3417 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3418 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3419
3420 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3421 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3422 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3423 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3424 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3425 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3426
3427 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3428 project?</strong></p>
3429
3430 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3431 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3432 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3433 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3434 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3435 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3436 with this job.</p>
3437
3438 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3439 Edu?</strong></p>
3440
3441 <p>The independence.</p>
3442
3443 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3444 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3445 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3446
3447 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3448 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3449 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3450 working reliable. </p>
3451
3452 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3453 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3454 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3455 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3456 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3457 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3458 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3459 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3460
3461 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3462 Edu?</strong></p>
3463
3464 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3465 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3466 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3467
3468 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3469
3470 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3471 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3472
3473 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3474 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3475
3476 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3477 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3478 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3479 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3480 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3481 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3482 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3483
3484       </div>
3485       <div class="tags">
3486
3487
3488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3489
3490
3491       </div>
3492     </div>
3493     <div class="padding"></div>
3494
3495     <div class="entry">
3496       <div class="title">
3497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
3498       </div>
3499       <div class="date">
3500         23rd July 2014
3501       </div>
3502       <div class="body">
3503         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3504 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3505 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3506 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3507 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3508 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3509 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3510 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3511 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3512 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3513 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3514 the translation show this very well:</p>
3515
3516 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3517
3518 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3519 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3520 project pages and the
3521 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3522 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3523 and HTML version available in the
3524 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3525 directory</a>.</p>
3526
3527 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3528 you find any.</p>
3529
3530       </div>
3531       <div class="tags">
3532
3533
3534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3535
3536
3537       </div>
3538     </div>
3539     <div class="padding"></div>
3540
3541     <div class="entry">
3542       <div class="title">
3543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
3544       </div>
3545       <div class="date">
3546         17th June 2014
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="body">
3549         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3550 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3551 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3552 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3553 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3554
3555 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3556 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3557 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3558 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3559 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3560 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3561 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3562 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3563 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3564 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3565 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3566 goals.</p>
3567
3568 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3569 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3570 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3571 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3572 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3573 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3574 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3575 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3576 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3577 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3578 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3579 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3580 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3581 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3582 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3583 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3584 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3585 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3586 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3587 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3588 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3589 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3590 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3591 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3592
3593 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3594 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3595 track the English original.  For this we use the
3596 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3597 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3598 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3599 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3600 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3601 files), which the translations update with the native language
3602 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3603 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3604 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3605 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3606 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3607 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3608 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3609 of the documentation.</p>
3610
3611 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3612 recommend using
3613 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3614 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3615 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3616 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3617 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3618 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3619 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3620 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3621
3622 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3623 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3624 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3625 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3626 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3627 translated images by storing translated versions in
3628 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3629 package maintainers know more.</p>
3630
3631 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3632 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3633 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3634 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3635 PDF version</a> or the
3636 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3637 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3638 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3639
3640 <p>To learn more, check out
3641 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3642 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3643 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3644 manual on the wiki</a> and
3645 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3646 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3647
3648       </div>
3649       <div class="tags">
3650
3651
3652         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/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3653
3654
3655       </div>
3656     </div>
3657     <div class="padding"></div>
3658
3659     <div class="entry">
3660       <div class="title">
3661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3662       </div>
3663       <div class="date">
3664         29th May 2014
3665       </div>
3666       <div class="body">
3667         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3668 in my car, connected to
3669 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3670 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3671 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3672 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3673 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3674 such car computer.</p>
3675
3676 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3677
3678 <ul>
3679
3680  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3681
3682  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3683    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3684    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3685    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3686    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3687
3688  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3689    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3690    route.</li>
3691
3692  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3693
3694  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3695    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3696    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3697    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3698    connection do not work.</li>
3699
3700  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3701    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3702
3703  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3704    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3705
3706  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3707    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3708
3709 </ul>
3710
3711 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3712 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3713
3714       </div>
3715       <div class="tags">
3716
3717
3718         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3719
3720
3721       </div>
3722     </div>
3723     <div class="padding"></div>
3724
3725     <div class="entry">
3726       <div class="title">
3727         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
3728       </div>
3729       <div class="date">
3730         29th April 2014
3731       </div>
3732       <div class="body">
3733         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3734 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3735 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3736 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3737 newer AVM2 format - see
3738 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3739 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3740 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3741 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3742 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3743 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3744 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3745 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3746 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3747 sites do not work yet.</p>
3748
3749 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3750 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3751 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3752 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3753 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3754 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3755 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3756 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3757 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3758 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3759 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3760
3761 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3762 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3763 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3764 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3765 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3766 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3767 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3768
3769 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3770 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3771 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3772 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3773 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3774
3775       </div>
3776       <div class="tags">
3777
3778
3779         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3780
3781
3782       </div>
3783     </div>
3784     <div class="padding"></div>
3785
3786     <div class="entry">
3787       <div class="title">
3788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
3789       </div>
3790       <div class="date">
3791         23rd April 2014
3792       </div>
3793       <div class="body">
3794         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3795 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3796 So I implemented one, using
3797 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3798 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3799 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3800 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3801 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3802 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3803
3804 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3805 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3806 packages to install.  The first part is in
3807 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3808 this:</p>
3809
3810 <p><blockquote><pre>
3811 Task: isenkram
3812 Section: hardware
3813 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3814  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3815  proposed.
3816 Test-new-install: mark show
3817 Relevance: 8
3818 Packages: for-current-hardware
3819 </pre></blockquote></p>
3820
3821 <p>The second part is in
3822 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3823 this:</p>
3824
3825 <p><blockquote><pre>
3826 #!/bin/sh
3827 #
3828 (
3829     isenkram-lookup
3830     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3831 ) | sort -u
3832 </pre></blockquote></p>
3833
3834 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3835 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3836 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3837 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3838 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3839 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3840
3841 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3842 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3843 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3844 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3845 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3846 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3848 the python-apt code (bug
3849 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3850 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3851 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3852 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3853 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3854 unstable today.</p>
3855
3856 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3857 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3858 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3859 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3860 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3861 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3862 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3863 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3864 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3865
3866 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3867 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3868 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3869 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3870 package.  See also
3871 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3872 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3873 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3874 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3875
3876       </div>
3877       <div class="tags">
3878
3879
3880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3881
3882
3883       </div>
3884     </div>
3885     <div class="padding"></div>
3886
3887     <div class="entry">
3888       <div class="title">
3889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
3890       </div>
3891       <div class="date">
3892         15th April 2014
3893       </div>
3894       <div class="body">
3895         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3896 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3897 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3898 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3899 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3900 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3901
3902 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3903 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3904 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3905 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3906 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3907 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3908 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3909
3910 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3911 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3912 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3913 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3914 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3915 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3916 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3917 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3918 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3919 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3920 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3921 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3922
3923 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3924 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3925 become root:</p>
3926
3927 <p><pre>
3928 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3929   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3930   u-boot-tools
3931 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3932   freedom-maker
3933 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3934 </pre></p>
3935
3936 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3937 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3938 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3939 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3940 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3941 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3942 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3943 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3944
3945 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3946 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3947 the preseed values:</p>
3948
3949 <p><pre>
3950 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3951 </pre></p>
3952
3953 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3954 it still work.</p>
3955
3956 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3957 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3958 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3959 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3960 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3961 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3962 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3963
3964 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3965 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3966 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3967 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3968 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3969 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3970
3971       </div>
3972       <div class="tags">
3973
3974
3975         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3976
3977
3978       </div>
3979     </div>
3980     <div class="padding"></div>
3981
3982     <div class="entry">
3983       <div class="title">
3984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
3985       </div>
3986       <div class="date">
3987          9th April 2014
3988       </div>
3989       <div class="body">
3990         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3991 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3992 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3993 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3994 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3995 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3996 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3997 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3998 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3999 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
4000 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
4001 have looked at a system called
4002 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
4003 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
4004
4005 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4006 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4007 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
4008 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4009 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
4010 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4011 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4012 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4013 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
4014 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
4015 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4016 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4017 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
4018
4019 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4020 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
4021 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
4022 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4023 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4024 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
4025 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4026 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4027 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
4028 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4029 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4030 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4031 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
4032 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4033 account.</p>
4034
4035 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4036 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
4037 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4038 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4039 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4040 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4041 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4042
4043 <p><blockquote><pre>
4044 [s3c]
4045 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4046 backend-login: API-login
4047 backend-password: API-password
4048 fs-passphrase: local-password
4049 </pre></blockquote></p>
4050
4051 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4052 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4053 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4054 details and password to create it:</p>
4055
4056 <p><blockquote><pre>
4057 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4058 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4059   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4060 Enter backend login:
4061 Enter backend password:
4062 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4063 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4064 Enter encryption password:
4065 Confirm encryption password:
4066 Generating random encryption key...
4067 Creating metadata tables...
4068 Dumping metadata...
4069 ..objects..
4070 ..blocks..
4071 ..inodes..
4072 ..inode_blocks..
4073 ..symlink_targets..
4074 ..names..
4075 ..contents..
4076 ..ext_attributes..
4077 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4078 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4079 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4080
4081 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4082
4083 <p><blockquote><pre>
4084 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4085   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4086 Using 4 upload threads.
4087 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4088 Reading metadata...
4089 ..objects..
4090 ..blocks..
4091 ..inodes..
4092 ..inode_blocks..
4093 ..symlink_targets..
4094 ..names..
4095 ..contents..
4096 ..ext_attributes..
4097 Mounting filesystem...
4098 # df -h /s3ql
4099 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4100 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4101 #
4102 </pre></blockquote></p>
4103
4104 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4105 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4106 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4107 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4108 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4109 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4110
4111 <p><blockquote><pre>
4112 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4113 #
4114 </pre></blockquote></p>
4115
4116 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4117 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4118 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4119 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4120 file system:</p>
4121
4122 <p><blockquote><pre>
4123 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4124 Using cached metadata.
4125 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4126 Checking DB integrity...
4127 Creating temporary extra indices...
4128 Checking lost+found...
4129 Checking cached objects...
4130 Checking names (refcounts)...
4131 Checking contents (names)...
4132 Checking contents (inodes)...
4133 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4134 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4135 Checking objects (backend)...
4136 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4137 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4138 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4139 Checking objects (sizes)...
4140 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4141 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4142 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4143 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4144 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4145 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4146 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4147 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4148 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4149 Checking directory reachability...
4150 Checking unix conventions...
4151 Checking referential integrity...
4152 Dropping temporary indices...
4153 Backing up old metadata...
4154 Dumping metadata...
4155 ..objects..
4156 ..blocks..
4157 ..inodes..
4158 ..inode_blocks..
4159 ..symlink_targets..
4160 ..names..
4161 ..contents..
4162 ..ext_attributes..
4163 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4164 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4165 #
4166 </pre></blockquote></p>
4167
4168 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4169 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4170 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4171 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4172 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4173 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4174 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4175 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4176 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4177 working set.</p>
4178
4179 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4180 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4181 busy:</p>
4182
4183 <p><blockquote><pre>
4184 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4185   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4186 Using 8 upload threads.
4187 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4188 #
4189 </pre></blockquote></p>
4190
4191 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4192 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4193 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4194 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4195 s3qlctrl:
4196
4197 <p><blockquote><pre>
4198 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4199 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4200 #
4201 </pre></blockquote></p>
4202
4203 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4204 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4205 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4206 a report:</p>
4207
4208 <p><blockquote><pre>
4209 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4210 Directory entries:    9141
4211 Inodes:               9143
4212 Data blocks:          8851
4213 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4214 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4215 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4216 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4217 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4218 #
4219 </pre></blockquote></p>
4220
4221 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4222 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4223 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4224 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4225 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4226 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4227 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4228 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4229 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4230 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4231 best.</p>
4232
4233 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4234 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4235 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4236 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4237 poster is titled
4238 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4239 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4240 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4241 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4242 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4243
4244 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4245 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4246 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4247 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4248 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4249 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4250 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4251 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4252
4253 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4254 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4255 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4256 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4257 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4258 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4259 only read from it.</p>
4260
4261 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4262 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4263 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4264
4265       </div>
4266       <div class="tags">
4267
4268
4269         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4270
4271
4272       </div>
4273     </div>
4274     <div class="padding"></div>
4275
4276     <div class="entry">
4277       <div class="title">
4278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4279       </div>
4280       <div class="date">
4281          1st April 2014
4282       </div>
4283       <div class="body">
4284         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4285 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4286 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4287 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4288 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4289 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4290 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4291 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4292 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4293 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4294 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4295 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4296 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4297
4298 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4299 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4300 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4301 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4302 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4303 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4304 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4305 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4306 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4307 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4308 Linux.</p>
4309
4310 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4311 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4312 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4313 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4314 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4315 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4316 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4317 Windows before metro).</p>
4318
4319 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4320 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4321 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4322 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4323 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4324 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4325 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4326 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4327 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4328 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4329 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4330 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4331 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4332 image.</p>
4333
4334       </div>
4335       <div class="tags">
4336
4337
4338         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
4339
4340
4341       </div>
4342     </div>
4343     <div class="padding"></div>
4344
4345     <div class="entry">
4346       <div class="title">
4347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4348       </div>
4349       <div class="date">
4350         30th March 2014
4351       </div>
4352       <div class="body">
4353         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4354 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4355 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4356 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4357 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4358
4359 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4360
4361 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4362 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4363 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4364 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4365 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4366
4367 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4368 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4369 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4370
4371 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4372 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4373 hunger.</p>
4374
4375 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4376 project?</strong></p>
4377
4378 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4379 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4380 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4381 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4382 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4383 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4384 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4385 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4386 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4387 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4388
4389 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4390 Edu?</strong></p>
4391
4392 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4393 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4394 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4395 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4396 be made of steel.</p>
4397
4398 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4399 Edu?</strong></p>
4400
4401 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4402
4403 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4404 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4405 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4406 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4407 or dropped.</p>
4408
4409 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4410 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4411 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4412 discourage many people too.</p>
4413
4414 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4415
4416 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4417 Virtualbox.</p>
4418
4419
4420 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4421 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4422
4423 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4424 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4425 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4426 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4427 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4428 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4429 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4430 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4431 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4432
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="tags">
4435
4436
4437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4438
4439
4440       </div>
4441     </div>
4442     <div class="padding"></div>
4443
4444     <div class="entry">
4445       <div class="title">
4446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4447       </div>
4448       <div class="date">
4449         25th March 2014
4450       </div>
4451       <div class="body">
4452         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4453 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4454 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4455 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4456 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4457 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4458 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4459 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4460 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4461
4462 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4463 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4464 looked a given way.  Such
4465 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4466 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4467 called a
4468 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4469 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4470 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4471 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4472 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4473 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4474 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4475 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4476 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4477 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4478 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4479 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4480 There are several commercial services around providing such
4481 timestamping.  A quick search for
4482 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4483 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4484 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4485 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4486 Vadis</a>,
4487 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4488 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4489 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4490 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4491
4492 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4493 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4494 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4495 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4496 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4497 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4498 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4499 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4500 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4501 Greifswald.</p>
4502
4503 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4504 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4505 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4506 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4507 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4508
4509 <p><blockquote><pre>
4510 #!/bin/sh
4511 set -e
4512 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4513 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4514 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4515 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4516 cafile=chain.txt
4517 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4518     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4519 fi
4520 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4521     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4522 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4523 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4524 base64 < "$resfile"
4525 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4526 </pre></blockquote></p>
4527
4528 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4529 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4530 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4531 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4532 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4533 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4534 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4535 changed.</p>
4536
4537 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4538 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4539 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4540 to set up?</p>
4541
4542       </div>
4543       <div class="tags">
4544
4545
4546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4547
4548
4549       </div>
4550     </div>
4551     <div class="padding"></div>
4552
4553     <div class="entry">
4554       <div class="title">
4555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
4556       </div>
4557       <div class="date">
4558         21st March 2014
4559       </div>
4560       <div class="body">
4561         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4562 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4563 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4564 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4565 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4566 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4567 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4568
4569 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4570 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4571 tried using
4572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4573 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4574 and program
4575 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4576 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4578 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4579 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4580 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4581 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4582 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4583 this method.</p>
4584
4585 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4586 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4587 problem is
4588 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4589 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4590 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4591 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4592 DVD structures, as the python library
4593 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4594 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4595 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4596 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4597 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4598 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4599
4600 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4601 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4602
4603       </div>
4604       <div class="tags">
4605
4606
4607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4608
4609
4610       </div>
4611     </div>
4612     <div class="padding"></div>
4613
4614     <div class="entry">
4615       <div class="title">
4616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
4617       </div>
4618       <div class="date">
4619         14th March 2014
4620       </div>
4621       <div class="body">
4622         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4623 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4624 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4625 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4626 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4627 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4628 release (0.2).</p>
4629
4630 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4631 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4632 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4633 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4634 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4635 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4636 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4637 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4638 and build using
4639 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4640 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4641
4642 <pre>
4643 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4644   freedom-maker
4645 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4646   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4647   u-boot-tools
4648 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4649 </pre>
4650
4651 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4652 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4653 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4654 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4655 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4656 kpartx call.</p>
4657
4658 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4659 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4660 the preseed values:</p>
4661
4662 <pre>
4663 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4664 </pre>
4665
4666 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4667 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4668 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4669 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4670 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4671 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4672
4673 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4674 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4675 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4676 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4677 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4678 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4679
4680       </div>
4681       <div class="tags">
4682
4683
4684         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4685
4686
4687       </div>
4688     </div>
4689     <div class="padding"></div>
4690
4691     <div class="entry">
4692       <div class="title">
4693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4694       </div>
4695       <div class="date">
4696         12th March 2014
4697       </div>
4698       <div class="body">
4699         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4700 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4701 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4702 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4703 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4704 document this better when one of the customers of
4705 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4706 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4707 get this working are the following:</p>
4708
4709 <p><ol>
4710
4711 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4712 example host here.</li>
4713
4714 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4715 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4716
4717 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4718 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4719
4720 </ol></p>
4721
4722 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4723 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4724 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4725 started).</p>
4726
4727 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4728 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4729
4730 <p><blockquote><pre>
4731 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4732 Export list for nas-server:
4733 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4734 root@tjener:~#
4735 </pre></blockquote></p>
4736
4737 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4738 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4739 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4740 NFS access.</p>
4741
4742 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4743 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4744 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4745
4746 <p><blockquote><pre>
4747 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4748 </pre></blockquote></p>
4749
4750 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4751 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4752 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4753 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4754
4755 <p><blockquote><pre>
4756 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4757 objectClass: automount
4758 cn: nas-server
4759 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4760
4761 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4762 objectClass: top
4763 objectClass: automountMap
4764 ou: auto.nas-server
4765
4766 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4767 objectClass: automount
4768 cn: /
4769 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4770 </pre></blockquote></p>
4771
4772 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4773 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4774 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4775
4776 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4777 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4778 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4779 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4780
4781       </div>
4782       <div class="tags">
4783
4784
4785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
4786
4787
4788       </div>
4789     </div>
4790     <div class="padding"></div>
4791
4792     <div class="entry">
4793       <div class="title">
4794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
4795       </div>
4796       <div class="date">
4797         22nd February 2014
4798       </div>
4799       <div class="body">
4800         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4801 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4802 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4803 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4804 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4805 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4806 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4807 proper home since then.</p>
4808
4809 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4810 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4811 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4812 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4813 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4814
4815 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4816 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4817 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4818 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4819 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4820 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4821 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4822 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4823 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4824
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="tags">
4827
4828
4829         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>.
4830
4831
4832       </div>
4833     </div>
4834     <div class="padding"></div>
4835
4836     <div class="entry">
4837       <div class="title">
4838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4839       </div>
4840       <div class="date">
4841          3rd February 2014
4842       </div>
4843       <div class="body">
4844         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4845 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4846 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4847 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4848 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4849 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4850 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4851 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
4852 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4853
4854 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4855 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4856 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4857 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4858 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4859 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4860
4861 <p><blockquote><pre>
4862 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4863 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4864 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4865 dhclient /dev/eth0
4866 </pre></blockquote></p>
4867
4868 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4869 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4870 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4871
4872 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4873 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4874 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4875 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4876 side.</p>
4877
4878 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4879 stuff:</p>
4880
4881 <p><blockquote><pre>
4882 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4883 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4884 EOF
4885 apt-get update
4886 apt-get dist-upgrade
4887 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4888     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4889 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4890 </pre></blockquote></p>
4891
4892 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4893 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4894 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4895 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4896 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4897 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4898 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4899 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4900 ssh instead.
4901
4902 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4903 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4904 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4905 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4906 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4907 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4908
4909 <p><blockquote><pre>
4910 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4911 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4912 EOF
4913 </pre></blockquote></p>
4914
4915 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4916 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4917 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4918 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4919
4920 <p><blockquote><pre>
4921 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4922 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4923 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4924 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4925 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4926 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4927 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4928 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4929 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4930 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4931 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4932 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4933 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4934 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4935 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4936 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4937 #
4938 </pre></blockquote></p>
4939
4940 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4941 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4942 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4943 command line stuff.<p>
4944
4945       </div>
4946       <div class="tags">
4947
4948
4949         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>.
4950
4951
4952       </div>
4953     </div>
4954     <div class="padding"></div>
4955
4956     <div class="entry">
4957       <div class="title">
4958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4959       </div>
4960       <div class="date">
4961         29th January 2014
4962       </div>
4963       <div class="body">
4964         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
4965 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
4966 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
4967 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
4968 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
4969 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
4970 investigated in
4971 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
4972 from December 2013, in the article
4973 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
4974 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
4975 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
4976 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
4977 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
4978 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
4979 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
4980 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
4981
4982 <p><blockquote>
4983 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
4984 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
4985 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
4986 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
4987 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
4988 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
4989 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
4990 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
4991 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
4992 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
4993 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
4994 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
4995
4996 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
4997 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
4998 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
4999 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
5000 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
5001 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
5002 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
5003 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
5004 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
5005 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
5006 </blockquote><p>
5007
5008 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
5009 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
5010 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
5011 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
5012 summarized like this:</p>
5013
5014 <p><blockquote>
5015 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
5016 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
5017 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
5018 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
5019 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
5020 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
5021 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
5022 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
5023 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
5024 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
5025 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
5026 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
5027 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
5028 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
5029 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
5030 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
5031 </blockquote></p>
5032
5033 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
5034 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
5035 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
5036 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
5037
5038 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5039 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5040 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5041
5042       </div>
5043       <div class="tags">
5044
5045
5046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
5047
5048
5049       </div>
5050     </div>
5051     <div class="padding"></div>
5052
5053     <div class="entry">
5054       <div class="title">
5055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5056       </div>
5057       <div class="date">
5058         14th January 2014
5059       </div>
5060       <div class="body">
5061         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5062 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5063 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5064 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5065 the source.  The company behind it provide
5066 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5067 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5068 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5069 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5070 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5071 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5072 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5073 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5074 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5075 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5076 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5077 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5078 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5079 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5080 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5081 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5082 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5083 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5084 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5085
5086 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5087
5088 <ul>
5089
5090   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5091   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5092   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5093
5094 </ul>
5095
5096 <p>You can
5097 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5098 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5099 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5100 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5101 include a test suite check.</p>
5102
5103       </div>
5104       <div class="tags">
5105
5106
5107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
5108
5109
5110       </div>
5111     </div>
5112     <div class="padding"></div>
5113
5114     <div class="entry">
5115       <div class="title">
5116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5117       </div>
5118       <div class="date">
5119         25th December 2013
5120       </div>
5121       <div class="body">
5122         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5123 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5124 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5125 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5126 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5127 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5128 George</a>.</p>
5129
5130 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5131
5132 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5133
5134 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5135 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5136 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5137 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5138 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5139 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5140
5141 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5142 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5143 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5144 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5145 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5146 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5147 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5148 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5149 scratch.</p>
5150
5151 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5152 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5153 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5154
5155 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5156 and cycling.</p>
5157
5158 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5159 project?</strong></p>
5160
5161 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5162 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5163 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5164 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5165 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5166 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5167
5168 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5169 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5170 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5171 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5172 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5173 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5174 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5175 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5176 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5177
5178 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5179 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5180 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5181 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5182
5183 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5184 Edu?</strong></p>
5185
5186 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5187 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5188 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5189 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5190 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5191 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5192 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5193 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5194 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5195 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5196 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5197 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5198 that it rocks!</p>
5199
5200 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5201 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5202 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5203 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5204 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5205 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5206 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5207
5208 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5209 Edu?</strong></p>
5210
5211 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5212 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5213 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5214 can list a few points about that:</p>
5215
5216 <ul>
5217
5218  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5219  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5220  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5221
5222 </ul>
5223
5224 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5225
5226 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5227
5228 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5229 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5230 year.</p>
5231
5232 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5233 run text tools. I use
5234 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5235 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5236 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5237 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5238 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5239 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5240 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5241 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5242 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5243 e-mail.</p>
5244
5245 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5246 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5247 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5248 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5249 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5250 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5251 Facebook now ;).</p>
5252
5253 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5254 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5255
5256 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5257 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5258
5259 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5260 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5261 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5262 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5263 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5264 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5265 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5266 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5267 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5268 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5269 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5270 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5271 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5272 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5273 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5274 plain criminal.</p>
5275
5276 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5277 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5278 founded an association named
5279 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5280 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5281 area of free and open source software, for example the
5282 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5283 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5284 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5285 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5286 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5287 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5288 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5289 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5290
5291 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5292 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5293 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5294 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5295 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5296 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5297 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5298 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5299 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5300 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5301 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5302 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5303
5304 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5305 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5306 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5307 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5308
5309 <!--
5310
5311 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5312
5313 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5314 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5315
5316  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5317    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5318    of the decision makers above;
5319  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5320    knowledge about free software
5321
5322 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5323
5324 -->
5325
5326       </div>
5327       <div class="tags">
5328
5329
5330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5331
5332
5333       </div>
5334     </div>
5335     <div class="padding"></div>
5336
5337     <div class="entry">
5338       <div class="title">
5339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5340       </div>
5341       <div class="date">
5342          6th December 2013
5343       </div>
5344       <div class="body">
5345         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5346 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5347 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5348 had a new school administrator show up on
5349 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5350 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5351 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5352 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5353 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5354
5355 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5356
5357 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5358 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5359 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5360 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5361
5362 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5363 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5364 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5365 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5366 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5367 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5368 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5369 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5370 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5371
5372 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5373 project?</strong></p>
5374
5375 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5376 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5377 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5378 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5379
5380 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5381 Edu?</strong></p>
5382
5383 <ul>
5384   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5385   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5386   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5387   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5388     single company,</li>
5389   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5390     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5391 </ul>
5392
5393 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5394 Edu?</strong></p>
5395
5396 <ul>
5397   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5398   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5399   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5400   working again reliably.
5401
5402   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5403   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5404   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5405   as their base.
5406
5407   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5408   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5409   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5410   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5411   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5412   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5413
5414   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5415   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5416   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5417   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5418   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5419   schemes.</li>
5420
5421   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5422   compared to Debian.</li>
5423
5424 </ul>
5425
5426 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5427 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5428 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5429 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5430
5431 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5432
5433 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5434 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5435 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5436 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5437
5438 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5439 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5440
5441 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5442
5443 <ul>
5444
5445   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5446     teaching and learning.</li>
5447
5448   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5449     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5450     conversion problems.</li>
5451
5452   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5453     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5454     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5455     science, not products.</li>
5456
5457   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5458     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5459
5460 </ul>
5461
5462       </div>
5463       <div class="tags">
5464
5465
5466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5467
5468
5469       </div>
5470     </div>
5471     <div class="padding"></div>
5472
5473     <div class="entry">
5474       <div class="title">
5475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="date">
5478         30th November 2013
5479       </div>
5480       <div class="body">
5481         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5482 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5483 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5484 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5485 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5486 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5487 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5488 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5489 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5490 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5491 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5492 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5493 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5494 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5495 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5496 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5497 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5498 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5499 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5500 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5501
5502       </div>
5503       <div class="tags">
5504
5505
5506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5507
5508
5509       </div>
5510     </div>
5511     <div class="padding"></div>
5512
5513     <div class="entry">
5514       <div class="title">
5515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="date">
5518         24th November 2013
5519       </div>
5520       <div class="body">
5521         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5522 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5523 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5524 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5525 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5526 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5527 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5528 is working on.  I checked the
5529 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5530 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5531 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5532 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5533 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5534 These are the release notes:</p>
5535
5536 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5537
5538 <ul>
5539
5540   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5541    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5542    up.</li>
5543
5544   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5545
5546   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5547    Matthias Klose.</li>
5548
5549   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5550    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5551
5552   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5553    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5554    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5555
5556 </ul>
5557
5558 <p>You can
5559 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5560 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5561 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5562 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5563 include a testsuite check.</p>
5564
5565       </div>
5566       <div class="tags">
5567
5568
5569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
5570
5571
5572       </div>
5573     </div>
5574     <div class="padding"></div>
5575
5576     <div class="entry">
5577       <div class="title">
5578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
5579       </div>
5580       <div class="date">
5581         21st November 2013
5582       </div>
5583       <div class="body">
5584         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5585 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5586 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5587 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5588 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5589 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5590 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5591 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5592 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5593 TED talk
5594 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5595 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5596 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5597
5598 <blockquote>
5599
5600 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5601 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5602 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5603 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5604 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5605 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5606 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5607 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5608 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5609 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5610 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5611
5612 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5613 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5614 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5615
5616 </blockquote>
5617
5618 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5619 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5620 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5621 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5622 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5623 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5624 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5625 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5626 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5627
5628       </div>
5629       <div class="tags">
5630
5631
5632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5633
5634
5635       </div>
5636     </div>
5637     <div class="padding"></div>
5638
5639     <div class="entry">
5640       <div class="title">
5641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
5642       </div>
5643       <div class="date">
5644         13th November 2013
5645       </div>
5646       <div class="body">
5647         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5648 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5649 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5650 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5651 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5652 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5653 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5654 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5655 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5656 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5657 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5658 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5659 right away. :)</p>
5660
5661       </div>
5662       <div class="tags">
5663
5664
5665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5666
5667
5668       </div>
5669     </div>
5670     <div class="padding"></div>
5671
5672     <div class="entry">
5673       <div class="title">
5674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
5675       </div>
5676       <div class="date">
5677         10th November 2013
5678       </div>
5679       <div class="body">
5680         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5681 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5682 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5683 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5684 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5685
5686 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5687 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5688 and downloaded
5689 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5690 recommended firmware image</a>
5691 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5692 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5693 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5694 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5695 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5696
5697 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5698 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5699 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5700 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5701 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5702 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5703 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5704 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5705 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5706 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5707 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5708 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5709 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5710
5711 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5712 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5713 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5714 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5715 them:</p>
5716
5717 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5718
5719 <pre>
5720
5721 config interface 'loopback'
5722         option ifname 'lo'
5723         option proto 'static'
5724         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5725         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5726
5727 config globals 'globals'
5728         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5729
5730 config interface 'lan'
5731         option ifname 'eth0'
5732         option type 'bridge'
5733         option proto 'dhcp'
5734         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5735         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5736         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5737         option ip6assign '60'
5738
5739 config interface 'mesh'
5740         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5741         option mtu '1528'
5742         option proto 'batadv'
5743         option mesh 'bat0'
5744 </pre>
5745
5746 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5747 <pre>
5748
5749 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5750         option type 'mac80211'
5751         option channel '11'
5752         option hwmode '11ng'
5753         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5754         option htmode 'HT20'
5755         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5756         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5757         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5758         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5759         option disabled '0'
5760
5761 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5762         option device 'radio0'
5763         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5764         option network 'mesh'
5765         option encryption 'none'
5766         option mode 'adhoc'
5767         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5768         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5769 </pre>
5770 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5771 <pre>
5772
5773 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5774         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5775         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5776         option 'ap_isolation'
5777         option 'bonding'
5778         option 'fragmentation'
5779         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5780         option 'gw_mode'
5781         option 'gw_sel_class'
5782         option 'log_level'
5783         option 'orig_interval'
5784         option 'vis_mode'
5785         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5786         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5787         option 'network_coding'
5788         option 'hop_penalty'
5789
5790 # yet another batX instance
5791 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5792 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5793 </pre>
5794
5795 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5796 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5797 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5798
5799       </div>
5800       <div class="tags">
5801
5802
5803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5804
5805
5806       </div>
5807     </div>
5808     <div class="padding"></div>
5809
5810     <div class="entry">
5811       <div class="title">
5812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
5813       </div>
5814       <div class="date">
5815          2nd November 2013
5816       </div>
5817       <div class="body">
5818         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5819 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5820 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5821 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5822 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5823
5824 <p><pre>
5825 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5826 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5827 # Provides:          rsyslog
5828 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5829 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5830 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5831 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5832 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5833 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5834 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5835 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5836 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5837 ### END INIT INFO
5838 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5839 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5840 </pre></p>
5841
5842 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5843 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5844 info/comments.</p>
5845
5846 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5847 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5848
5849 <p><pre>
5850 #!/bin/sh
5851
5852 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5853 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5854 # and status_of_proc is working.
5855 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5856
5857 #
5858 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5859
5860 #
5861 do_start()
5862 {
5863         # Return
5864         #   0 if daemon has been started
5865         #   1 if daemon was already running
5866         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5867         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5868                 || return 1
5869         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5870                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5871                 || return 2
5872         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5873         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5874         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5875 }
5876
5877 #
5878 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5879 #
5880 do_stop()
5881 {
5882         # Return
5883         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5884         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5885         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5886         #   other if a failure occurred
5887         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5888         RETVAL="$?"
5889         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5890         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5891         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5892         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5893         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5894         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5895         # sleep for some time.
5896         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5897         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5898         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5899         rm -f $PIDFILE
5900         return "$RETVAL"
5901 }
5902
5903 #
5904 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5905 #
5906 do_reload() {
5907         #
5908         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5909         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5910         # then implement that here.
5911         #
5912         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5913         return 0
5914 }
5915
5916 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5917 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5918 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5919 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5920     script="$1"
5921     shift
5922     . $script
5923 else
5924     exit 0
5925 fi
5926
5927 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5928 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5929
5930 # Exit if the package is not installed
5931 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5932
5933 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5934 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5935
5936 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5937 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5938
5939 case "$1" in
5940   start)
5941         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5942         do_start
5943         case "$?" in
5944                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5945                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5946         esac
5947         ;;
5948   stop)
5949         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5950         do_stop
5951         case "$?" in
5952                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5953                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5954         esac
5955         ;;
5956   status)
5957         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5958         ;;
5959   #reload|force-reload)
5960         #
5961         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5962         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5963         #
5964         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5965         #do_reload
5966         #log_end_msg $?
5967         #;;
5968   restart|force-reload)
5969         #
5970         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5971         # 'force-reload' alias
5972         #
5973         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5974         do_stop
5975         case "$?" in
5976           0|1)
5977                 do_start
5978                 case "$?" in
5979                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5980                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5981                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5982                 esac
5983                 ;;
5984           *)
5985                 # Failed to stop
5986                 log_end_msg 1
5987                 ;;
5988         esac
5989         ;;
5990   *)
5991         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5992         exit 3
5993         ;;
5994 esac
5995
5996 :
5997 </pre></p>
5998
5999 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6000 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6001 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6002 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6003
6004 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6005 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6006 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6007 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6008 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6009
6010       </div>
6011       <div class="tags">
6012
6013
6014         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>.
6015
6016
6017       </div>
6018     </div>
6019     <div class="padding"></div>
6020
6021     <div class="entry">
6022       <div class="title">
6023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6024       </div>
6025       <div class="date">
6026          1st November 2013
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="body">
6029         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6030 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6031 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6032 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6033 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6034 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6035 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6036 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6037 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6038 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6039 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6040 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6041
6042 <p>The source is now available from
6043 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6044
6045       </div>
6046       <div class="tags">
6047
6048
6049         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>.
6050
6051
6052       </div>
6053     </div>
6054     <div class="padding"></div>
6055
6056     <div class="entry">
6057       <div class="title">
6058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6059       </div>
6060       <div class="date">
6061         27th October 2013
6062       </div>
6063       <div class="body">
6064         <p>The
6065 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6066 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6067 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6068 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6069 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6070 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6071 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6072 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6073 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6074 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6075 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6076 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6077
6078 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6079 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6080 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6081 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6082 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6083 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6084 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6085 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6086 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6087 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6088 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6089 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6090 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6091 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6092 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6093 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6094 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6095 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6096 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6097 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6098 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6099 available from
6100 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6101 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6102
6103 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6104 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6105 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6106 list:</p>
6107
6108 <p><pre>
6109 #!/bin/sh
6110 set -e # Exit on first error
6111 rootdir="$1"
6112 cd "$rootdir"
6113 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6114 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6115 EOF
6116 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6117 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6118 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6119     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6120 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6121 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6122 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6123 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6124 </pre></p>
6125
6126 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6127 to build the image:</p>
6128
6129 <pre>
6130 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6131     --variant minbase \
6132     --arch armel \
6133     --distribution jessie \
6134     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6135     --image test.img \
6136     --size 600M \
6137     --bootsize 64M \
6138     --boottype vfat \
6139     --log-level debug \
6140     --verbose \
6141     --no-kernel \
6142     --no-extlinux \
6143     --root-password raspberry \
6144     --hostname raspberrypi \
6145     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6146     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6147     --package netbase \
6148     --package git-core \
6149     --package binutils \
6150     --package ca-certificates \
6151     --package wget \
6152     --package kmod
6153 </pre></p>
6154
6155 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6156 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6157 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6158 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6159 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6160 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6161 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6162
6163 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6164 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6165 build dependency list.</p>
6166
6167 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6168 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6169 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6170 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6171
6172       </div>
6173       <div class="tags">
6174
6175
6176         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
6177
6178
6179       </div>
6180     </div>
6181     <div class="padding"></div>
6182
6183     <div class="entry">
6184       <div class="title">
6185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
6186       </div>
6187       <div class="date">
6188         21st October 2013
6189       </div>
6190       <div class="body">
6191         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6192 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6193 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6194 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6195 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6196 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6197 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6198 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6199
6200 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6201 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6202 instead, I started playing with a
6203 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6204 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6205 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6206 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6207 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6208 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6209 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6210 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6211 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6212 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6213 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6214 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6215 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6216 every client on the local network.</p>
6217
6218 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6219 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6220 and a script
6221 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6222 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6223 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6224 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6225 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6226 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6227 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6228 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6229 support.</p>
6230
6231 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6232 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6233
6234 <p><pre>
6235 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6236     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6237 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6238 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6239 %
6240 </pre></p>
6241
6242 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6243 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6244 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6245 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6247 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6248
6249 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6250 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6251 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6252
6253 <p><table>
6254
6255 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6256 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6257 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6258 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6259 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6260 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6261
6262 </table></p>
6263
6264 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6265 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6266 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6267 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6268 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6269 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6270 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6271
6272       </div>
6273       <div class="tags">
6274
6275
6276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6277
6278
6279       </div>
6280     </div>
6281     <div class="padding"></div>
6282
6283     <div class="entry">
6284       <div class="title">
6285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
6286       </div>
6287       <div class="date">
6288         19th October 2013
6289       </div>
6290       <div class="body">
6291         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6292 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6293 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6294 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6295 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6296 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6297 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6298 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6299
6300       </div>
6301       <div class="tags">
6302
6303
6304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6305
6306
6307       </div>
6308     </div>
6309     <div class="padding"></div>
6310
6311     <div class="entry">
6312       <div class="title">
6313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6314       </div>
6315       <div class="date">
6316         15th October 2013
6317       </div>
6318       <div class="body">
6319         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6320 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6321 these. :)</p>
6322
6323 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6324 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6325 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6326 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6327 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6328 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6329 hope you will to. :)</p>
6330
6331 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6332 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6333 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6334 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6335 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6336
6337 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6338 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6339 statement under the heading
6340 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6341 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6342 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6343 too.</p>
6344
6345       </div>
6346       <div class="tags">
6347
6348
6349         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6350
6351
6352       </div>
6353     </div>
6354     <div class="padding"></div>
6355
6356     <div class="entry">
6357       <div class="title">
6358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
6359       </div>
6360       <div class="date">
6361         11th October 2013
6362       </div>
6363       <div class="body">
6364         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6365 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6366 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6367 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6368 successful examples like
6369 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6370 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6371 (see
6372 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6373 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6374 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6375 can be seen from their
6376 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6377 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6378 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6379 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6380 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6381
6382 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6383 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6384 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6385 my recent involvement in
6386 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6387 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6388 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6389 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6390 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6391 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6392 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6393 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6394 important over the years.</p>
6395
6396 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6397 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6398 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6399 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6400 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6401 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6402 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6403 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6404 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6405 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6406 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6407 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6408 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6409 speakers about this talk (from
6410 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6411
6412 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6413
6414 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6415 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6416 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6417 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6418 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6419 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6420 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6421 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6422 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6423 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6424 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6425 that project (from
6426 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6427
6428 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6429
6430 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6431 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6432 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6433 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6434 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6435 based community mesh networks.</p>
6436
6437 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6438 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6439 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6440 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6441 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6442 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6443 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6444 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6445 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6446
6447 <p><table>
6448 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6449 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6450 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6451 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6452 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6453 </table></p>
6454
6455 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6456 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6457 VillageTelco about
6458 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6459 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6460 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6461 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6462 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6463 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6464
6465 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6466 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6467 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6468 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6469
6470 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6471 us on IRC, either channel
6472 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6473 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6474 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6475
6476 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6477 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6478 and Innovation called
6479 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6480 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6481 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6482 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6483 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6484 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6485 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6486 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6487
6488 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6489 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6490 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6491 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6492 mesh system.</p>
6493
6494       </div>
6495       <div class="tags">
6496
6497
6498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6499
6500
6501       </div>
6502     </div>
6503     <div class="padding"></div>
6504
6505     <div class="entry">
6506       <div class="title">
6507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
6508       </div>
6509       <div class="date">
6510          8th October 2013
6511       </div>
6512       <div class="body">
6513         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6514 Salvador had published a
6515 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6516 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6517 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6518 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6519 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6520 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6521 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6522 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6523 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6524 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6525 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6526 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6527 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6528 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6529 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6530
6531 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6532
6533 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6534
6535 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6536 me know. :)</p>
6537
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="tags">
6540
6541
6542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6543
6544
6545       </div>
6546     </div>
6547     <div class="padding"></div>
6548
6549     <div class="entry">
6550       <div class="title">
6551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6552       </div>
6553       <div class="date">
6554         29th September 2013
6555       </div>
6556       <div class="body">
6557         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6558 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6559 complete announcement text can be found at
6560 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6561 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6562
6563 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6564 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6565 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6566 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6567
6568       </div>
6569       <div class="tags">
6570
6571
6572         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6573
6574
6575       </div>
6576     </div>
6577     <div class="padding"></div>
6578
6579     <div class="entry">
6580       <div class="title">
6581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
6582       </div>
6583       <div class="date">
6584         27th September 2013
6585       </div>
6586       <div class="body">
6587         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6588 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6589 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6590 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6591
6592 <ul>
6593
6594 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6595 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6596
6597 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6598 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6599
6600 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6601 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6602 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6603 (Youtube)</li>
6604
6605 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6606 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6607
6608 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6609 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6610
6611 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6612 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6613 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6614
6615 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6616 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6617 (Youtube)</li>
6618
6619 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6620 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6621
6622 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6623 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6624
6625 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6626 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6627 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6628
6629 </ul>
6630
6631 <p>A larger list is available from
6632 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6633 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6634
6635 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6636 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6637 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6638 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6639 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6640 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6641 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6642 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6643 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6644 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6645 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6646
6647       </div>
6648       <div class="tags">
6649
6650
6651         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6652
6653
6654       </div>
6655     </div>
6656     <div class="padding"></div>
6657
6658     <div class="entry">
6659       <div class="title">
6660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
6661       </div>
6662       <div class="date">
6663         16th September 2013
6664       </div>
6665       <div class="body">
6666         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6667 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6668
6669 <blockquote>
6670 <p>Hi,</p>
6671
6672 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6673 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6674 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6675
6676 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6677 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6678 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6679 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6680
6681 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6682 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6683
6684 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6685 compared to beta1:</p>
6686
6687 <ul>
6688
6689 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6690 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6691 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6692 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6693 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6694 main server.</li>
6695 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6696 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6697 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6698 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6699 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6700
6701 </ul>
6702
6703 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6704
6705 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6706
6707 <ul>
6708 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6709 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6710 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6711 </ul>
6712
6713 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6714
6715 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6716 <ul>
6717 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6718 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6719 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6720 </ul>
6721
6722 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6723
6724 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6725 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6726 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6727 as the other isos.</p>
6728
6729 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6730
6731 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6732 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6733
6734
6735 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6736
6737 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6738 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6739 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6740 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6741 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6742 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6743 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6744 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6745 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6746 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6747 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6748 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6749 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6750
6751 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6752 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6753 Squeeze release.</p>
6754
6755 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6756
6757 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6758 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6759 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6760 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6761 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6762 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6763 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6764 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6765 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6766 directory.</p>
6767
6768
6769 <p>cheers,
6770 <br>        Holger</p>
6771 </blockquote>
6772
6773       </div>
6774       <div class="tags">
6775
6776
6777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6778
6779
6780       </div>
6781     </div>
6782     <div class="padding"></div>
6783
6784     <div class="entry">
6785       <div class="title">
6786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6787       </div>
6788       <div class="date">
6789         10th September 2013
6790       </div>
6791       <div class="body">
6792         <p>I was introduced to the
6793 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6794 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6795 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6796 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6797 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6798 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6799 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6800 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6801
6802 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6803 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6804 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6805 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6806 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6807
6808 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6809 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6810 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6811 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6812 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6813 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6814 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6815 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6816 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6817 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6818 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6819 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6820 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6821 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6822 missing in Debian).</p>
6823
6824 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6825 scripts
6826 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6827 and a administrative web interface
6828 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6829 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6830 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6831 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6832 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6833 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6834 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6835 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6836 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6837 this is really working yet, see
6838 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6839 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6840 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6841 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6842 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6843 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6844 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6845
6846 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6847 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6848 at.</p>
6849
6850 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6851
6852 <ol>
6853
6854 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6855 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6856 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6857 to the Debian installer:<p>
6858 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6859
6860 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6861 install on.</li>
6862
6863 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6864 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6865
6866 </ol>
6867
6868 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6869
6870 <ol>
6871
6872 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6873 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6874 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6875 <pre>
6876 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6877 </pre></li>
6878 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6879 <pre>
6880 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6881    apt-key add -
6882 apt-get update
6883 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6884 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6885 </pre></li>
6886 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6887
6888 </ol>
6889
6890 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6891 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6892 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6893 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6894 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6895
6896 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6897 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6898 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6899 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6900
6901 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6902 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6903 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6904 irc.debian.org and the
6905 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6906 mailing list</a>.</p>
6907
6908 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6909 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6910 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6911 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6912 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6913 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6914
6915       </div>
6916       <div class="tags">
6917
6918
6919         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6920
6921
6922       </div>
6923     </div>
6924     <div class="padding"></div>
6925
6926     <div class="entry">
6927       <div class="title">
6928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6929       </div>
6930       <div class="date">
6931         22nd August 2013
6932       </div>
6933       <div class="body">
6934         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6935 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6936 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6937
6938 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6939
6940 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6941 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6942
6943 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6944
6945 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6946 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6947 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6948 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6949 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6950 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6951 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6952 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6953 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6954 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6955 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6956 desktop contains
6957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6958 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6959 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6960 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6961
6962 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
6963 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
6964 release.</p>
6965
6966 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6967 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6968 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6969 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6970 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
6971 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
6972 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
6973 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
6974 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
6975 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
6976 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
6977
6978 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6979
6980 <ul>
6981
6982 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
6983     work also without a attached tty.</li>
6984 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
6985     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
6986     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
6987     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
6988     required).</li>
6989
6990 </ul>
6991
6992 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6993
6994 <ul>
6995
6996 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
6997 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
6998 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
6999 stick ISO image.</li>
7000 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
7001 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
7002 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
7003     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
7004     cope with this.</li>
7005 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
7006 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
7007     empty password hashes.</li>
7008 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
7009     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
7010     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
7011
7012 </ul>
7013
7014 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7015
7016 <ul>
7017
7018 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7019     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7020 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
7021     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
7022
7023 </ul>
7024
7025 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7026
7027 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7028
7029 <ul>
7030
7031 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7032
7033 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7034
7035 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
7036
7037 </ul>
7038
7039 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
7040 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
7041
7042 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7043
7044 <ul>
7045
7046 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7047 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7048 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7049
7050 </ul>
7051
7052 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7053 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7054
7055
7056 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7057
7058 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7059
7060       </div>
7061       <div class="tags">
7062
7063
7064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7065
7066
7067       </div>
7068     </div>
7069     <div class="padding"></div>
7070
7071     <div class="entry">
7072       <div class="title">
7073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7074       </div>
7075       <div class="date">
7076         18th August 2013
7077       </div>
7078       <div class="body">
7079         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7080 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7081 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7082 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7083 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7084 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7085 currently on the disk.</p>
7086
7087 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7088 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7089 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7090 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7091 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7092 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7093 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7094 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7095 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7096 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7097 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7098 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7099 the broken disks.</p>
7100
7101       </div>
7102       <div class="tags">
7103
7104
7105         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>.
7106
7107
7108       </div>
7109     </div>
7110     <div class="padding"></div>
7111
7112     <div class="entry">
7113       <div class="title">
7114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
7115       </div>
7116       <div class="date">
7117          2nd August 2013
7118       </div>
7119       <div class="body">
7120         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7121 have worked on a Norwegian
7122 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7123 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7124 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7125 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7126 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7127 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7128 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7129 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7130 progress of the translation:</p>
7131
7132 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7133
7134 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7135 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7136 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7137 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7138 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7139 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7140 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7141 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7142 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7143 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7144 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7145
7146 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7147 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7148 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7149 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7150 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7151 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7152 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7153 project files currently available from
7154 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7155
7156 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7157 the updated
7158 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7159 and
7160 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7161 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7162 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7163 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7164
7165       </div>
7166       <div class="tags">
7167
7168
7169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7170
7171
7172       </div>
7173     </div>
7174     <div class="padding"></div>
7175
7176     <div class="entry">
7177       <div class="title">
7178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7179       </div>
7180       <div class="date">
7181         27th July 2013
7182       </div>
7183       <div class="body">
7184         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7185 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7186
7187 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7188 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7189
7190 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7191 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7192
7193 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7194
7195 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7196 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7197 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7198 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7199 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7200 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7201 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7202 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7203 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7204 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7205 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7206 desktop contains
7207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7208 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7209 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7210 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7211
7212 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7213 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7214 Squeeze release.</p>
7215
7216 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7217 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7218 release.</p>
7219
7220 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7221
7222 <ul>
7223
7224 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7225    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7226 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7227    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7228    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7229    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7230    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7231 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7232 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7233 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7234    crash bugs.</li>
7235
7236 </ul>
7237
7238 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7239
7240 <ul>
7241
7242 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7243    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7244 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7245    netinst CD.</li>
7246 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7247    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7248 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7249    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7250    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7251 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7252    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7253    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7254 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7255    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7256    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7257 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7258    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7259 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7260
7261 </ul>
7262
7263 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7264
7265 <ul>
7266
7267 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7268 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7269     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7270 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7271
7272 </ul>
7273
7274 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7275
7276 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7277
7278 <ul>
7279
7280 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7281
7282 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7283
7284 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7285
7286 </ul>
7287
7288 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7289 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7290
7291 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7292
7293 <ul>
7294
7295 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7296 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7297 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7298
7299 </ul>
7300
7301 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7302 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7303
7304
7305 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7306
7307 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7308
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="tags">
7311
7312
7313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7314
7315
7316       </div>
7317     </div>
7318     <div class="padding"></div>
7319
7320     <div class="entry">
7321       <div class="title">
7322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7323       </div>
7324       <div class="date">
7325         17th July 2013
7326       </div>
7327       <div class="body">
7328         <p>Today I switched to
7329 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7330 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7331 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7333 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7334 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7335 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7336 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7337 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7338 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7339 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7340 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7341 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7342 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7343 station from now on.</p>
7344
7345 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7346 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7347 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7348 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7349 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7350 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7351 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7352 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7353 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7354 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7355 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7356 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7357
7358 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7359 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7360 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7361 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7362 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7363 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7364 parameters are tuned:</p>
7365
7366 <ul>
7367
7368 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7369     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7370
7371 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7372     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7373     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7374
7375 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7376     systems.</li>
7377
7378 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7379     /etc/fstab.</li>
7380
7381 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7382
7383 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7384     cron.daily).</li>
7385
7386 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7387     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7388
7389 </ul>
7390
7391 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7392 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7393 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7394 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7395 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7396 from getting the data on the disk (see
7397 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7398 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7399 right thing to do.</p>
7400
7401 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7402 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7403 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7404
7405 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7406 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7407 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7408 instead of during my work.</p>
7409
7410 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7411 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7412
7413 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7414 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7415 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7416
7417 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7418 there.</p>
7419
7420 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7421 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7422 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7423 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7424 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7425 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7426 back.</p>
7427
7428       </div>
7429       <div class="tags">
7430
7431
7432         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>.
7433
7434
7435       </div>
7436     </div>
7437     <div class="padding"></div>
7438
7439     <div class="entry">
7440       <div class="title">
7441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="date">
7444         10th July 2013
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="body">
7447         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7448 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7449 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7450 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7451 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7452 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7453 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7454 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7455
7456 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7457 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7458 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7459 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7460 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7461 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7462 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7463 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7464 lock up when I download a new
7465 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7466 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7467 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7468
7469 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7470 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7471 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7472 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7473 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7474 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7475
7476 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7477 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7478 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7479 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7480 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7481 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7482
7483 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7484 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7485 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7486 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7487 exist).</p>
7488
7489       </div>
7490       <div class="tags">
7491
7492
7493         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>.
7494
7495
7496       </div>
7497     </div>
7498     <div class="padding"></div>
7499
7500     <div class="entry">
7501       <div class="title">
7502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7503       </div>
7504       <div class="date">
7505          9th July 2013
7506       </div>
7507       <div class="body">
7508         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7509 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7510 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7511 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7512 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7513 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7514 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7515
7516 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7517 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7518 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7519 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7520 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7521
7522       </div>
7523       <div class="tags">
7524
7525
7526         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>.
7527
7528
7529       </div>
7530     </div>
7531     <div class="padding"></div>
7532
7533     <div class="entry">
7534       <div class="title">
7535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7536       </div>
7537       <div class="date">
7538          5th July 2013
7539       </div>
7540       <div class="body">
7541         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7542 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7543 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7544 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7545 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7546 ended up picking a
7547 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7548 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7549 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7550 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7551 on that below.</p>
7552
7553 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7554 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7555 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7556 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7557 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7558 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7559 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7560 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7561 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7562
7563 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7564 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7565 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7566 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7567 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7568 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7569 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7570
7571 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7572 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7573
7574 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7575 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7576 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7577 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7578 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7579 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7580 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7581 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7582 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7583 kernel developers as
7584 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7585 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7586 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7587 Lenovo forums, both for
7588 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7589 2012-11-10</a> and for
7590 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7591 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7592 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7593 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7594 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7595 There is even a
7596 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7597 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7598 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7599
7600 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7601 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7602 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7603 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7604 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7605 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7606 fixed. :)</p>
7607
7608       </div>
7609       <div class="tags">
7610
7611
7612         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>.
7613
7614
7615       </div>
7616     </div>
7617     <div class="padding"></div>
7618
7619     <div class="entry">
7620       <div class="title">
7621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7622       </div>
7623       <div class="date">
7624          4th July 2013
7625       </div>
7626       <div class="body">
7627         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7628 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7629 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7630 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7631 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7632 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7633 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7634 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7635 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7636
7637 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7638 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7639 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7640 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7641 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7642 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7643 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7644
7645 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7646 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7647 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7648 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7649 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7650 new laptop now. :)</p>
7651
7652 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7653
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="tags">
7656
7657
7658         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>.
7659
7660
7661       </div>
7662     </div>
7663     <div class="padding"></div>
7664
7665     <div class="entry">
7666       <div class="title">
7667         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7668       </div>
7669       <div class="date">
7670          3rd July 2013
7671       </div>
7672       <div class="body">
7673         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7674 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7675
7676 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7677 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7678
7679 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7680 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7681
7682 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7683
7684 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7685 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7686 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7687 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7688 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7689 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7690 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7691 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7692 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7693 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7694 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7695 desktop contains
7696 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7697 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7698 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7699 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7700
7701 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7702 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7703 Squeeze release.</p>
7704
7705 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7706 <ul>
7707   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7708   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7709     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7710     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7711   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7712     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7713     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7714   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7715     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7716     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7717     too.</li>
7718   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7719     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7720 </ul>
7721 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7722 <ul>
7723   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7724   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7725   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7726     up for some language options.</li>
7727   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7728   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7729   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7730     d-i is doing it.</li>
7731   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7732     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7733   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7734     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7735     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7736   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7737     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7738   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7739   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7740     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7741   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7742     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7743 </ul>
7744 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7745 <ul>
7746   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7747     available yet (698840).</li>
7748   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7749 </ul>
7750 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7751
7752 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7753 <ul>
7754   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7755   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7756   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7757 </ul>
7758
7759 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7760 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7761
7762 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7763 <ul>
7764   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7765   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7766   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7767 </ul>
7768
7769 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7770 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7771
7772 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7773
7774 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7775
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="tags">
7778
7779
7780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7781
7782
7783       </div>
7784     </div>
7785     <div class="padding"></div>
7786
7787     <div class="entry">
7788       <div class="title">
7789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7790       </div>
7791       <div class="date">
7792         25th June 2013
7793       </div>
7794       <div class="body">
7795         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7796 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7797 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7798 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7799 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7800 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7802 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7803 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7804 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7805 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7806
7807 <p><pre>
7808 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7809 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7810 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7811 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7812 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7813 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7814 firmware-ipw2x00
7815 firmware-ipw2x00
7816 Preconfiguring packages ...
7817 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7818 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7819 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7820 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7821 #
7822 </pre></p>
7823
7824 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7825 printed instead:</p>
7826
7827 <p><pre>
7828 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7829 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7830 #
7831 </pre></p>
7832
7833 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7834 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7835
7836 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7837 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7838 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7839 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7840 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7841 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7842 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7843 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7844 machine.</p>
7845
7846 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7847 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7848 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7849 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7850 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7851 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7852
7853       </div>
7854       <div class="tags">
7855
7856
7857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7858
7859
7860       </div>
7861     </div>
7862     <div class="padding"></div>
7863
7864     <div class="entry">
7865       <div class="title">
7866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
7867       </div>
7868       <div class="date">
7869         22nd June 2013
7870       </div>
7871       <div class="body">
7872         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7873 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7874 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7875 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7876 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7877 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7878 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7879 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7880 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7881
7882 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7883 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7884 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7885 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7886 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7887 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7888 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7889 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7890 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7891 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7892 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7893 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7894 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7895 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7896
7897 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7898 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7899 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7900 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7901 the problem.</p>
7902
7903 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7904 please join us on
7905 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7906 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7907 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7908 list.</p>
7909
7910       </div>
7911       <div class="tags">
7912
7913
7914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7915
7916
7917       </div>
7918     </div>
7919     <div class="padding"></div>
7920
7921     <div class="entry">
7922       <div class="title">
7923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7924       </div>
7925       <div class="date">
7926         17th June 2013
7927       </div>
7928       <div class="body">
7929         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7930 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7931 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7932 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7933 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7934 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7935 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7936 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7937
7938 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7939
7940 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7941 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7942 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7943 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7944 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7945 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7946 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7947 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7948 field.</p>
7949
7950 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7951 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7952 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7953 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7954 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7955 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7956
7957 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7958 project?</strong></p>
7959
7960 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7961 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7962 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
7963 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
7964 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
7965 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
7966 ways to contribute.</p>
7967
7968 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
7969 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
7970 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
7971 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
7972 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
7973 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
7974 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
7975 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
7976 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
7977 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
7978
7979 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7980 Edu?</strong></p>
7981
7982 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
7983 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
7984 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
7985 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
7986 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
7987 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
7988 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
7989 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
7990
7991 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
7992 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
7993 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
7994 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
7995 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
7996 project.</p>
7997
7998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7999 Edu?</strong></p>
8000
8001 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
8002 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
8003 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
8004 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
8005 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
8006 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
8007 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
8008 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
8009 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
8010
8011 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
8012 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
8013 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
8014 on.</p>
8015
8016 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8017
8018 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
8019 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
8020 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
8021 Enlightenment project a lot!),
8022 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
8023 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
8024 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
8025 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
8026 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
8027
8028 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8029 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8030
8031 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
8032 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
8033 that:</p>
8034
8035 <ul>
8036
8037 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
8038
8039 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
8040     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
8041     of teenagers more?</li>
8042
8043 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
8044     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
8045     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
8046     them!)</li>
8047
8048 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8049     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8050     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8051
8052 </ul>
8053
8054 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8055 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8056 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8057 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8058 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8059
8060       </div>
8061       <div class="tags">
8062
8063
8064         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8065
8066
8067       </div>
8068     </div>
8069     <div class="padding"></div>
8070
8071     <div class="entry">
8072       <div class="title">
8073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="date">
8076         12th June 2013
8077       </div>
8078       <div class="body">
8079         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8080 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8081 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8082 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8083 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8084 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8085
8086 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8087
8088 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8089 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8090 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8091
8092 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8093 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8094 each other.</p>
8095
8096 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8097 project?</strong></p>
8098
8099 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8100 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8101 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8102 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8103 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8104 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8105 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8106 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8107 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8108 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8109 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8110 we'll get there one day.</p>
8111
8112 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8113 Edu?</strong></p>
8114
8115 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8116 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8117 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8118 very high quality work.</p>
8119
8120 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8121 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8122 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8123 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8124 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8125
8126 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8127 Edu?</strong></p>
8128
8129 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8130 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8131 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8132
8133 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8134 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8135 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8136 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8137 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8138 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8139 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8140 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8141 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8142 currently.</p>
8143
8144 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8145 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8146 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8147 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8148 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8149 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8150 autonomous.</p>
8151
8152 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8153
8154 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8155 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8156 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8157 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8158 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8159
8160 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8161 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8162 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8163 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8164 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8165 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8166 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8167 X.</p>
8168
8169 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8170 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8171 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8172 it :p)
8173
8174 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8175 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8176
8177 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8178 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8179 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8180 that.</p>
8181
8182 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8183 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8184 advantage of that.</p>
8185
8186 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8187 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8188 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8189 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8190 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8191 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8192 best solution for them.</p>
8193
8194 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8195 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8196 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8197
8198       </div>
8199       <div class="tags">
8200
8201
8202         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8203
8204
8205       </div>
8206     </div>
8207     <div class="padding"></div>
8208
8209     <div class="entry">
8210       <div class="title">
8211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
8212       </div>
8213       <div class="date">
8214         11th June 2013
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="body">
8217         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8218 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8219 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8220 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8221 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8222 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8223 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8224 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8225 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8226 i915 driver used by the
8227 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8228 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8229
8230 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8231 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8232 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8233 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8234 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8235
8236 <pre>
8237 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8238 update-initramfs -u -k all
8239 </pre>
8240
8241 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8242 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8243 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8244 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8245 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8246 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8247 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8248 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8249 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8250 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8251 number.</p>
8252
8253 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8254 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8255
8256 <p><pre>
8257 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8258     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8259     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8260  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8261  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8262     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8263  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8264     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8265  Latency: 0
8266  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8267  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8268  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8269  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8270  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8271  Capabilities: <access denied>
8272  Kernel driver in use: i915
8273 </pre></p>
8274
8275 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8276
8277 <p><pre>
8278 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8279        ...
8280         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8281         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8282        ...
8283 }
8284 </pre></p>
8285
8286 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8287 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8288 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8289 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8290 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8291 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8292 yet shown up in
8293 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8294 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8295 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8296 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8297 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8298 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8299
8300 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8301 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8302 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8303 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8304 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8305 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8306 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8307 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8308 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8309 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8310 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8311 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8312
8313 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8314 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8315 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8316 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8317 backlight.</p>
8318
8319       </div>
8320       <div class="tags">
8321
8322
8323         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>.
8324
8325
8326       </div>
8327     </div>
8328     <div class="padding"></div>
8329
8330     <div class="entry">
8331       <div class="title">
8332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8333       </div>
8334       <div class="date">
8335         10th June 2013
8336       </div>
8337       <div class="body">
8338         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8339 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8340
8341 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8342 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8343
8344 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8345 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8346
8347 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8348
8349 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8350 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8351 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8352 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8353 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8354 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8355 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8356 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8357 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8358 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8359 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8360 desktop contains
8361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8362 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8363 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8364 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8365
8366 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8367 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8368 Squeeze release.</p>
8369
8370 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8371
8372 <ul>
8373
8374 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8375 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
8376 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8377 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8378 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8379
8380 </ul>
8381
8382 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8383
8384 <ul>
8385
8386 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
8387 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8388 <li>New Romanian translation.
8389 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8390 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
8391 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8392 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8393 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8394 <li>More testsuite tests.
8395 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8396 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8397
8398 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8399 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8400
8401 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8402 them up with GOsa².</li>
8403
8404 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8405
8406 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8407 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8408 entered password). </li>
8409
8410 </ul>
8411
8412 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8413
8414 <ul>
8415
8416 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8417
8418 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8419 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8420 missing import feature).</li>
8421
8422 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8423
8424 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8425 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8426 unfixed.</li>
8427
8428 </ul>
8429
8430 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8431
8432 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8433
8434 <ul>
8435
8436 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8437
8438 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8439
8440 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8441
8442 </ul>
8443
8444 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8445 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8446
8447 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8448
8449 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8450
8451       </div>
8452       <div class="tags">
8453
8454
8455         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8456
8457
8458       </div>
8459     </div>
8460     <div class="padding"></div>
8461
8462     <div class="entry">
8463       <div class="title">
8464         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
8465       </div>
8466       <div class="date">
8467          5th June 2013
8468       </div>
8469       <div class="body">
8470         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8471 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8472 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8473 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8474 the project:
8475
8476 <ol>
8477
8478 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8479   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8480   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8481   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8482   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8483
8484 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8485   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8486   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8487   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8488   #698840</a>.</li>
8489
8490 </ol>
8491
8492 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8493 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8494 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8495
8496       </div>
8497       <div class="tags">
8498
8499
8500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8501
8502
8503       </div>
8504     </div>
8505     <div class="padding"></div>
8506
8507     <div class="entry">
8508       <div class="title">
8509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8510       </div>
8511       <div class="date">
8512          4th June 2013
8513       </div>
8514       <div class="body">
8515         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8516 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8517 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8518 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8519 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8520 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8521
8522 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8523
8524 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8525 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8526 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8527 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8528
8529 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8530 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8531 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8532
8533 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8534 project?</strong></p>
8535
8536 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8538 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8539 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8540 manual.
8541
8542 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8543 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8544 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8545 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8546
8547 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8548 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8549 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8550 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8551 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8552 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8553 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8554 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8555 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8556 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8557
8558 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8559 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8560 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8561 beautiful project.</p>
8562
8563 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8564 Edu?</strong></p>
8565
8566 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8567 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8568 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8569
8570 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8571 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8572 of educational free software.</p>
8573
8574 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8575 Edu?</strong></p>
8576
8577 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8578 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8579 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8580 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8581 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8582
8583 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8584 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8585 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8586 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8587 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8588 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8589 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8590 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8591
8592 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8593
8594 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8595 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8596 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8597 also using the mathematical software
8598 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8599 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8600 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8601
8602 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8603 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8604 statistics?</strong></p>
8605
8606 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8607 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8608 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8609 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8610
8611 <ul>
8612
8613 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8614 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8615 constructions in planar geometry
8616
8617 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8618 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8619 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8620
8621 </ul>
8622
8623 <p>I like also
8624 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8625 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8626 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8627
8628 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8629 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8630
8631 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8632
8633 <ul>
8634
8635 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8636
8637 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8638     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8639     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8640
8641 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8642
8643 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8644     system.</li>
8645
8646 </ul>
8647
8648       </div>
8649       <div class="tags">
8650
8651
8652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8653
8654
8655       </div>
8656     </div>
8657     <div class="padding"></div>
8658
8659     <div class="entry">
8660       <div class="title">
8661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
8662       </div>
8663       <div class="date">
8664          1st June 2013
8665       </div>
8666       <div class="body">
8667         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8668 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8669 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8670 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8671 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8672 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8673 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8674 program.</p>
8675
8676 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
8677
8678 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8679 <p>
8680 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
8681 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8682 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
8683 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
8684 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8685 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
8686 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
8687 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
8688 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
8689 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
8690 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
8691 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
8692 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
8693 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
8694 </p>
8695
8696 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8697 <p>
8698 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
8699 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
8700 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
8701 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
8702 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
8703 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8704 </p>
8705
8706 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8707 <p>
8708 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8709 </p>
8710
8711 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8712 <p>
8713 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
8714 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
8715 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
8716 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
8717 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
8718 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
8719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
8720 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
8721 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8722 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8723 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
8724 </p>
8725
8726 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8727 <p>
8728 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8729 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8730 </p>
8731
8732 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8733 <p>
8734 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
8735 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
8736 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8737 </p>
8738
8739 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8740 <p>
8741 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8742 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
8743 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
8744 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
8745 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
8746 </p>
8747
8748 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8749 <p>
8750 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8751 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
8752 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8753 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
8754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
8756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
8757 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
8758 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
8759 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
8760 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
8761 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
8762 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
8763 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
8764 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8765 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
8766 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
8767 </p>
8768
8769 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8770 <p>
8771 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8772 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
8773 </p>
8774
8775 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8776 <p>
8777 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
8778 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
8779 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8780 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8781 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
8782 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
8783 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
8784 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
8785 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
8786 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8787 </p>
8788
8789 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8790 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8791 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8792 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8793 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8794 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8795 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8796
8797       </div>
8798       <div class="tags">
8799
8800
8801         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8802
8803
8804       </div>
8805     </div>
8806     <div class="padding"></div>
8807
8808     <div class="entry">
8809       <div class="title">
8810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
8811       </div>
8812       <div class="date">
8813         27th May 2013
8814       </div>
8815       <div class="body">
8816         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8817 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
8818 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8819 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8820 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8821 and Windows 8.</p>
8822
8823 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8824 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8825 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8826 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8827 enough to tell.</p>
8828
8829 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8830 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8831 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8832 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8833 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8834 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8835 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8836 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8837 to follow.</p>
8838
8839 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8840 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8841 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8842 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8843 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8844 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8845 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8846 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8847
8848 <p>I've updated the
8849 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8850 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8851 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8852 machine.</p>
8853
8854 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8855 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8856
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="tags">
8859
8860
8861         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>.
8862
8863
8864       </div>
8865     </div>
8866     <div class="padding"></div>
8867
8868     <div class="entry">
8869       <div class="title">
8870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8871       </div>
8872       <div class="date">
8873         25th May 2013
8874       </div>
8875       <div class="body">
8876         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8877 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8878 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8879 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8880 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8881 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8882
8883 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8884 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8885 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8886 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8887 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8888 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8889 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8890 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8891 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8892 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8893
8894 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8895 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8896 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8897 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8898 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8899 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8900
8901 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8902 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8903 on new Laptops?</p>
8904
8905       </div>
8906       <div class="tags">
8907
8908
8909         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>.
8910
8911
8912       </div>
8913     </div>
8914     <div class="padding"></div>
8915
8916     <div class="entry">
8917       <div class="title">
8918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8919       </div>
8920       <div class="date">
8921         17th May 2013
8922       </div>
8923       <div class="body">
8924         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8925 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8926 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8927 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8928 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8929 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8930 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8931 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8932 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8933 donate some money</a>.
8934
8935 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8936 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8937 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8938 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8939 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8940
8941 <p>The script,
8942 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8943 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8944 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8945 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8946
8947 <ol>
8948
8949 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8950 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8951 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8952     our configuration.</li>
8953 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8954     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8955     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8956     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8957 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8958     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8959 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8960
8961 </ol>
8962
8963 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8964 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8965 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8966 the needed packages.</p>
8967
8968 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8969 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8970 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8971 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8972 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8973 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8974
8975 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8976 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8977 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8978
8979 <p><pre>
8980 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8981 DESKTOP="lxde"
8982 </pre></p>
8983
8984 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8985 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8986 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8987 boot.</p>
8988
8989       </div>
8990       <div class="tags">
8991
8992
8993         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>.
8994
8995
8996       </div>
8997     </div>
8998     <div class="padding"></div>
8999
9000     <div class="entry">
9001       <div class="title">
9002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9003       </div>
9004       <div class="date">
9005         14th May 2013
9006       </div>
9007       <div class="body">
9008         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9009 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
9010 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
9011
9012 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
9013 2013-05-14</strong></p>
9014
9015 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
9016 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
9017 codename "Wheezy".</p>
9018
9019 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9020
9021 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
9022 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
9023 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
9024 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
9025 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
9026 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
9027 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
9028 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
9029
9030 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9031 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9032 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9033
9034 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9035 <ul>
9036   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
9037     default.</li>
9038   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
9039   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
9040   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
9041     ibus-anthy.</li>
9042 </ul>
9043
9044 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9045 <ul>
9046
9047   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9048     reliability improvements.</li>
9049   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9050     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9051   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9052     problems.</li>
9053   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9054     direct:// URL.</li>
9055   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9056   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9057   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9058   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9059     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9060   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9061     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9062 </ul>
9063
9064 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9065 <ul>
9066
9067   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9068     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9069     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9070   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9071   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9072     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9073   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9074   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9075   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9076     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9077   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9078     password submission problem
9079     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9080
9081 </ul>
9082
9083 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9084
9085 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9086 <ul>
9087
9088   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9089   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9090   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
9091
9092 </ul>
9093
9094 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9095
9096 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9097
9098 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9099
9100 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9101
9102       </div>
9103       <div class="tags">
9104
9105
9106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9107
9108
9109       </div>
9110     </div>
9111     <div class="padding"></div>
9112
9113     <div class="entry">
9114       <div class="title">
9115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
9116       </div>
9117       <div class="date">
9118         11th May 2013
9119       </div>
9120       <div class="body">
9121         <P>In January,
9122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9123 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9124 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9125 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9126 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9127 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9128 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9129 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9130 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9131 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9132 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9133 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9134
9135 <p><table>
9136 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
9137 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9138 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
9139 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9140 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9141 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9142 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
9143 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
9144 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
9145 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9146 </table></p>
9147
9148 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9149 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9150 available in experimental.</p>
9151
9152 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9153 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9154 for LEGO designers.</p>
9155
9156       </div>
9157       <div class="tags">
9158
9159
9160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9161
9162
9163       </div>
9164     </div>
9165     <div class="padding"></div>
9166
9167     <div class="entry">
9168       <div class="title">
9169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
9170       </div>
9171       <div class="date">
9172          5th May 2013
9173       </div>
9174       <div class="body">
9175         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9176 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9177 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9178 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9179 soon.</p>
9180
9181 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9182 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9183 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9184 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9185 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9186 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9187 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9188 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9189 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9190 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9191 Edu.</a>
9192
9193 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9194 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9195 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9196 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9197 follow.<p>
9198
9199       </div>
9200       <div class="tags">
9201
9202
9203         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>.
9204
9205
9206       </div>
9207     </div>
9208     <div class="padding"></div>
9209
9210     <div class="entry">
9211       <div class="title">
9212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9213       </div>
9214       <div class="date">
9215         26th April 2013
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="body">
9218         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9219 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9220 announcement:</p>
9221
9222 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9223 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9224
9225 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9226 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9227
9228 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9229
9230 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9231 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9232 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9233 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9234 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9235 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9236 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9237 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9238 installed via the network.</p>
9239
9240 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9241 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9242 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9243
9244 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9245
9246 <ul>
9247 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9248   <ul>
9249      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9250      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9251          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9252          manual.)</li>
9253      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9254      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9255      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9256      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9257      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9258      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9259      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9260      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9261      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9262      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9263      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9264      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9265          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9266          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9267      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9268          installation.</li>
9269      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9270          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
9271   </ul></li>
9272 </ul>
9273
9274 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9275 <ul>
9276 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9277     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9278     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9279 </ul>
9280
9281 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9282 <ul>
9283 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9284     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9285     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9286 </ul>
9287
9288 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9289 <ul>
9290 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9291     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9292     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9293 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9294     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9295     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9296 </ul>
9297
9298 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9299 <ul>
9300 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9301     yet.</li>
9302 </ul>
9303
9304 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9305
9306 <ul>
9307 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9308     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9309     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9310 </ul>
9311
9312 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9313
9314 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9315 <ul>
9316 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9317 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9318 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9319 </ul>
9320
9321 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9322
9323 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9324
9325 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9326
9327 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9328
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="tags">
9331
9332
9333         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9334
9335
9336       </div>
9337     </div>
9338     <div class="padding"></div>
9339
9340     <div class="entry">
9341       <div class="title">
9342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
9343       </div>
9344       <div class="date">
9345         16th April 2013
9346       </div>
9347       <div class="body">
9348         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9349 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9350 Details about the gathering can be found
9351 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9352 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9353 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9354 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9355 weekend.</p>
9356
9357 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9358 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9359 Edu release.</p>
9360
9361 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9362
9363       </div>
9364       <div class="tags">
9365
9366
9367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9368
9369
9370       </div>
9371     </div>
9372     <div class="padding"></div>
9373
9374     <div class="entry">
9375       <div class="title">
9376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
9377       </div>
9378       <div class="date">
9379          3rd April 2013
9380       </div>
9381       <div class="body">
9382         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9383 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9384 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9385 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9386
9387 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9388 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9389 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9390 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9391 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9392 BTS. :)</p>
9393
9394       </div>
9395       <div class="tags">
9396
9397
9398         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9399
9400
9401       </div>
9402     </div>
9403     <div class="padding"></div>
9404
9405     <div class="entry">
9406       <div class="title">
9407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
9408       </div>
9409       <div class="date">
9410         26th March 2013
9411       </div>
9412       <div class="body">
9413         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9414 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9415 font you use when printing.</p>
9416
9417 <p>Three years ago,
9418 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9419 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9420 changed their default front from
9421 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9422 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9423 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9424 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9425 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9426 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9427 prints.</p>
9428
9429 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9430 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9431 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9432 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9433 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9434 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9435 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9436 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9437 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9438 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9439 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9440
9441 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9442 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9443 and save some money in the process.</p>
9444
9445 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9446 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9447 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9448 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9449 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9450 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9451 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9452 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9453 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9454
9455       </div>
9456       <div class="tags">
9457
9458
9459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9460
9461
9462       </div>
9463     </div>
9464     <div class="padding"></div>
9465
9466     <div class="entry">
9467       <div class="title">
9468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
9469       </div>
9470       <div class="date">
9471         24th March 2013
9472       </div>
9473       <div class="body">
9474         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9475 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9476 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9477 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9478 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9479 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9480 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9481 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9482 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9483 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9484 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9485 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9486
9487 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9488 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9489 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9490 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9491 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9492 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9493 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9494 all I had to do was to use the
9495 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9496 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9497 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9498 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9499 xsltproc/fop (aka
9500 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9501 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9502 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9503 technical detail.</p>
9504
9505 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9506 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9507 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9508 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9509 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9510 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9511
9512 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9513 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9514 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9515 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9516 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9517 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9518 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9519 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9520 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9521
9522 <p><blockquote><pre>
9523 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9524 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9525   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9526     &lt;hr/&gt;
9527   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9528 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9529 </pre></blockquote></p>
9530
9531 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9532
9533 <p><blockquote><pre>
9534 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9535 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9536   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9537     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9538       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9539     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9540   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9541 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9542 </pre></blockquote></p>
9543
9544 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9545 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9546 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9547 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9548 enough.</p>
9549
9550 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9551 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9552 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9553 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9554 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9555 look like this:</p>
9556
9557 <p><blockquote><pre>
9558 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9559 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9560   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9561     &lt;br/&gt;
9562   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9563 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9564 </pre></blockquote></p>
9565
9566 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9567
9568 <p><blockquote><pre>
9569 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9570 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9571   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9572   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9573     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9574   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9575 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9576 </pre></blockquote></p>
9577
9578 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9579 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9580 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9581 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9582 page.</p>
9583
9584 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9585 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9586 github</a>
9587 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9588 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9589 days.</p>
9590
9591       </div>
9592       <div class="tags">
9593
9594
9595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9596
9597
9598       </div>
9599     </div>
9600     <div class="padding"></div>
9601
9602     <div class="entry">
9603       <div class="title">
9604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
9605       </div>
9606       <div class="date">
9607         17th March 2013
9608       </div>
9609       <div class="body">
9610         <p>Via
9611 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9612 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9613 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9614 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9615 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9616 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9617 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9618
9619 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9620 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9621
9622 <blockquote>
9623 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9624 </blockquote>
9625
9626 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9627
9628 <blockquote>
9629 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9630 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9631 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9632 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9633 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9634 </blockquote>
9635
9636 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9637 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9638 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9639 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9640
9641 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9642 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9643
9644 <blockquote>
9645 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9646 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9647 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9648 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9649 </blockquote>
9650
9651 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9652 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9653 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9654 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9655 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9656
9657 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9658 embedding:</p>
9659
9660 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9661
9662       </div>
9663       <div class="tags">
9664
9665
9666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9667
9668
9669       </div>
9670     </div>
9671     <div class="padding"></div>
9672
9673     <div class="entry">
9674       <div class="title">
9675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9676       </div>
9677       <div class="date">
9678          8th March 2013
9679       </div>
9680       <div class="body">
9681         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9682 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9683 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9684 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9685 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9686 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9687 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9688
9689 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9690
9691 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9692 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9693
9694 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9695 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9696 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9697 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9698 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9699 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9700
9701 <p>Images are available for download at
9702 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9703
9704 <p>md5sums:
9705 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9706 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9707 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9708
9709 <p>sha1sums:
9710 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9711 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9712 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9713
9714 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9715
9716 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9717 2013-03-03:</p>
9718
9719 <ul>
9720   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9721   <ul>
9722         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9723         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9724   </ul></li>
9725   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9726   <ul>
9727         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9728         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9729   </ul></li>
9730   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9731      <ul>
9732         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9733         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9734         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9735                 Closes: #664596</li>
9736         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9737                 Closes: #664976</li>
9738         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9739            <ul>
9740                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9741                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9742            </ul></li>
9743         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9744            <ul>
9745                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9746                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9747                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9748                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9749                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9750            </ul></li>
9751         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9752     </ul>
9753   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9754     <ul>
9755         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9756     </ul></li>
9757 </ul>
9758
9759 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9760 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9761 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9762 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9763
9764 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9765 mailinglist
9766 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9767 </p></blockquote>
9768
9769 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9770
9771       </div>
9772       <div class="tags">
9773
9774
9775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9776
9777
9778       </div>
9779     </div>
9780     <div class="padding"></div>
9781
9782     <div class="entry">
9783       <div class="title">
9784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
9785       </div>
9786       <div class="date">
9787          3rd March 2013
9788       </div>
9789       <div class="body">
9790         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9791 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9792 support using
9793 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9794 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9795 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9796 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9797 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9798 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9799 using the GNU LGPL, and
9800 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9801
9802 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9803 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9804 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9805 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9806 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9807 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9808
9809 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9810 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9811 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9812 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9813 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9814 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9815 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9816 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9817 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9818 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9819 signal distribution is handled using
9820 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9821 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9822 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9823 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9824 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9825 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9826 them up a bit more first.</p>
9827
9828 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9829 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9830 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9831 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9832 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9833 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9834 development.</p>
9835
9836       </div>
9837       <div class="tags">
9838
9839
9840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9841
9842
9843       </div>
9844     </div>
9845     <div class="padding"></div>
9846
9847     <div class="entry">
9848       <div class="title">
9849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
9850       </div>
9851       <div class="date">
9852         27th February 2013
9853       </div>
9854       <div class="body">
9855         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9856 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9857 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9858 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9859 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9860 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9861 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9862 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9863 GNU», with this description:
9864
9865 <p><blockquote>
9866 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9867 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9868 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9869 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9870 </blockquote></p>
9871
9872 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9873 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9874 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9875 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9876 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9877
9878       </div>
9879       <div class="tags">
9880
9881
9882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9883
9884
9885       </div>
9886     </div>
9887     <div class="padding"></div>
9888
9889     <div class="entry">
9890       <div class="title">
9891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
9892       </div>
9893       <div class="date">
9894         15th February 2013
9895       </div>
9896       <div class="body">
9897         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9898 now a great source of free maps available from
9899 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9900 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9901 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9902 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9903 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9904 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9905 page for descriptions).</p>
9906
9907 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9908 map you can just edit the
9909 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9910 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9911
9912       </div>
9913       <div class="tags">
9914
9915
9916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
9917
9918
9919       </div>
9920     </div>
9921     <div class="padding"></div>
9922
9923     <div class="entry">
9924       <div class="title">
9925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="date">
9928         12th February 2013
9929       </div>
9930       <div class="body">
9931         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9932 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9933 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9934 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9935 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9936 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9937 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9938 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9939 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9940 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9941 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9942 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9943 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9944 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9945 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9946 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9947
9948 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9949 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9950 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9951 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9952 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9953 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9954 fields:</p>
9955
9956 <p><pre>
9957 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9958 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9959 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9960 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9961 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9962 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9963 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9964 </pre></p>
9965
9966 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
9967 answer regarding
9968 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
9969 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
9970 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
9971 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
9972
9973 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
9974
9975 <p><pre>
9976 BEGIN:VCARD
9977 VERSION:2.1
9978 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
9979 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
9980 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
9981 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
9982 REV:20130212T095000Z
9983 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9984 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9985 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9986 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9987 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9988 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9989 END:VCARD
9990 </pre></p>
9991
9992 <p>The resulting QR code created using
9993 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
9994 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
9995 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
9996 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
9997 system.</p>
9998
9999 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
10000
10001 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
10002 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
10003 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
10004 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
10005
10006 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
10007 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
10008
10009       </div>
10010       <div class="tags">
10011
10012
10013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10014
10015
10016       </div>
10017     </div>
10018     <div class="padding"></div>
10019
10020     <div class="entry">
10021       <div class="title">
10022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
10023       </div>
10024       <div class="date">
10025         10th February 2013
10026       </div>
10027       <div class="body">
10028         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
10029
10030 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
10031 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
10032 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
10033 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
10034 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
10035 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
10036 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
10037 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
10038 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
10039 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
10040 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
10041
10042 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
10043 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
10044 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
10045 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
10046 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10047 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10048 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10049 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10050 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10051 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10052 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10053 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10054 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10055 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10056 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10057 ones own
10058 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10059 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10060 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10061 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10062 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10063 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10064 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10065 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10066 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10067 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10068 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10069
10070 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10071 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10072 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10073 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10074 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10075 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10076
10077 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10078 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10079 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10080
10081       </div>
10082       <div class="tags">
10083
10084
10085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10086
10087
10088       </div>
10089     </div>
10090     <div class="padding"></div>
10091
10092     <div class="entry">
10093       <div class="title">
10094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
10095       </div>
10096       <div class="date">
10097          2nd February 2013
10098       </div>
10099       <div class="body">
10100         <p>My
10101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10102 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10103 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10104 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10105 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10106 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10107 version too.</p>
10108
10109 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10110 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10111 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10112 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10113 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10114 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10115 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10116 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10117
10118 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10119 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10120 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10121 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10122 it. :)</p>
10123
10124 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10125 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10126 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10127
10128       </div>
10129       <div class="tags">
10130
10131
10132         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>.
10133
10134
10135       </div>
10136     </div>
10137     <div class="padding"></div>
10138
10139     <div class="entry">
10140       <div class="title">
10141         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10142       </div>
10143       <div class="date">
10144         22nd January 2013
10145       </div>
10146       <div class="body">
10147         <p>Yesterday, I
10148 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10149 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10150 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10151 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10152 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10153 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10154 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10155 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10156 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10157 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10158 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10159 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10160 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10161
10162 <pre>
10163 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10164 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10165 </pre>
10166
10167 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10168 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10169 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10170 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10171
10172 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10173 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10174 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10175 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10176 word.</p>
10177
10178 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10179 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10180 process.</p>
10181
10182 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10183 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10184
10185       </div>
10186       <div class="tags">
10187
10188
10189         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10190
10191
10192       </div>
10193     </div>
10194     <div class="padding"></div>
10195
10196     <div class="entry">
10197       <div class="title">
10198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
10199       </div>
10200       <div class="date">
10201         21st January 2013
10202       </div>
10203       <div class="body">
10204         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10205 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10206 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10207 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10208 it, fetch the
10209 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10210 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10211 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10212 autostart script.</p>
10213
10214 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10215
10216 <ul>
10217
10218 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10219 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10220
10221 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10222 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10223 initially did.</li>
10224
10225 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10226 the APT database, a database
10227 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10228 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10229
10230 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10231 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10232 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10233 package or packages.</li>
10234
10235 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10236 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10237
10238 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10239 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10240
10241 </ul>
10242
10243 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10244 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10245 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10246 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10247
10248 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10249 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10250 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10251 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10252 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10253
10254 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10255 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10256 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10257 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10258 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10259 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10260 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10261 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10262
10263 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10264 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10265 '<tt>svn checkout
10266 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10267 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10268 devscripts package.</p>
10269
10270 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10271 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10272 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10274 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10275
10276       </div>
10277       <div class="tags">
10278
10279
10280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10281
10282
10283       </div>
10284     </div>
10285     <div class="padding"></div>
10286
10287     <div class="entry">
10288       <div class="title">
10289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
10290       </div>
10291       <div class="date">
10292         19th January 2013
10293       </div>
10294       <div class="body">
10295         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10296 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10297 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10298 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10299 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10300 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10301 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10302 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10303 not a durable solution.
10304
10305 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10306 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10307
10308 <ul>
10309
10310 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10311   than A4).</li>
10312 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10313 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10314 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10315 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10316 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10317 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10318 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10319 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10320 size).</li>
10321 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10322   X.org packages.</li>
10323 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10324   the time).
10325
10326 </ul>
10327
10328 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10329 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10330 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10331 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10332 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10333 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10334 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10335 still be useful.</p>
10336
10337 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10338 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10339 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10340 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10341 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10342 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10343
10344       </div>
10345       <div class="tags">
10346
10347
10348         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>.
10349
10350
10351       </div>
10352     </div>
10353     <div class="padding"></div>
10354
10355     <div class="entry">
10356       <div class="title">
10357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
10358       </div>
10359       <div class="date">
10360         18th January 2013
10361       </div>
10362       <div class="body">
10363         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10364 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10365 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10366 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10367 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10368 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10369 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10370
10371 <pre>
10372 #!/usr/bin/python
10373 import sys
10374 import apt
10375 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10376     cache = apt.Cache()
10377     cache.open(None)
10378     thepkgs = []
10379     for pkg in cache:
10380         version = pkg.candidate
10381         if version is None:
10382             version = pkg.installed
10383         if version is None:
10384             continue
10385         record = version.record
10386         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10387             continue
10388         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10389         for t in mime_types:
10390             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10391             if t == mimetype:
10392                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10393     return thepkgs
10394 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10395 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10396     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10397 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10398 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10399     print "  %s" %pkg
10400 </pre>
10401
10402 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10403
10404 <pre>
10405 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10406 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10407   gecko-mediaplayer
10408 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10409 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10410   browser-plugin-gnash
10411 %
10412 </pre>
10413
10414 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10415 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10416 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10417 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10418
10419 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10420 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10421 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10422 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10423 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10424 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10425
10426       </div>
10427       <div class="tags">
10428
10429
10430         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>.
10431
10432
10433       </div>
10434     </div>
10435     <div class="padding"></div>
10436
10437     <div class="entry">
10438       <div class="title">
10439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
10440       </div>
10441       <div class="date">
10442         16th January 2013
10443       </div>
10444       <div class="body">
10445         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10446 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10447 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10448 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10449 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10450 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10451 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10452 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10453
10454 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10455 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10456 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10457 can be found on the
10458 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10459 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10460 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10461 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10462 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10463
10464 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10465
10466 <pre>
10467   count MIME type
10468   ----- -----------------------
10469      32 text/plain
10470      30 audio/mpeg
10471      29 image/png
10472      28 image/jpeg
10473      27 application/ogg
10474      26 audio/x-mp3
10475      25 image/tiff
10476      25 image/gif
10477      22 image/bmp
10478      22 audio/x-wav
10479      20 audio/x-flac
10480      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10481      18 video/x-ms-asf
10482      18 audio/x-musepack
10483      18 audio/x-mpeg
10484      18 application/x-ogg
10485      17 video/mpeg
10486      17 audio/x-scpls
10487      17 audio/ogg
10488      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10489 </pre>
10490
10491 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10492
10493 <pre>
10494   count MIME type
10495   ----- -----------------------
10496      33 text/plain
10497      32 image/png
10498      32 image/jpeg
10499      29 audio/mpeg
10500      27 image/gif
10501      26 image/tiff
10502      26 application/ogg
10503      25 audio/x-mp3
10504      22 image/bmp
10505      21 audio/x-wav
10506      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10507      19 audio/x-mpeg
10508      18 video/mpeg
10509      18 audio/x-scpls
10510      18 audio/x-flac
10511      18 application/x-ogg
10512      17 video/x-ms-asf
10513      17 text/html
10514      17 audio/x-musepack
10515      16 image/x-xbitmap
10516 </pre>
10517
10518 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10519
10520 <pre>
10521   count MIME type
10522   ----- -----------------------
10523      31 text/plain
10524      31 image/png
10525      31 image/jpeg
10526      29 audio/mpeg
10527      28 application/ogg
10528      27 image/gif
10529      26 image/tiff
10530      26 audio/x-mp3
10531      23 audio/x-wav
10532      22 image/bmp
10533      21 audio/x-flac
10534      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10535      19 audio/x-mpeg
10536      18 video/x-ms-asf
10537      18 video/mpeg
10538      18 audio/x-scpls
10539      18 application/x-ogg
10540      17 audio/x-musepack
10541      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10542      16 video/x-msvideo
10543 </pre>
10544
10545 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10546 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10547 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10548 issues.</p>
10549
10550 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10551 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10552
10553       </div>
10554       <div class="tags">
10555
10556
10557         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>.
10558
10559
10560       </div>
10561     </div>
10562     <div class="padding"></div>
10563
10564     <div class="entry">
10565       <div class="title">
10566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
10567       </div>
10568       <div class="date">
10569         15th January 2013
10570       </div>
10571       <div class="body">
10572         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10574 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10576 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10577 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10578 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10579 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10580 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10581 packages.</p>
10582
10583 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10584 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10585 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10586 modalias.</p>
10587
10588 <p><blockquote>
10589 Package: package-name
10590 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10591 </blockquote></p>
10592
10593 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10594 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10595
10596 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10597 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10598
10599 <p><blockquote>
10600 Package: cheese
10601 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10602 </blockquote></p>
10603
10604 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10605 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10606
10607 <p><blockquote>
10608 Package: pcmciautils
10609 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10610 </blockquote></p>
10611
10612 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10613 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10614
10615 <p><blockquote>
10616 Package: colorhug-client
10617 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10618 </blockquote></p>
10619
10620 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10621 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10622 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10623
10624 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10625 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10626 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10627 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10628 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10629 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10630 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10631 Raring.</p>
10632
10633 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10634 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10635 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10636 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10637 try the
10638 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10639 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10640 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10641 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10642
10643 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10644 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10645
10646 <p><blockquote>
10647 % ./hw-support-lookup
10648 <br>yubikey-personalization
10649 <br>%
10650 </blockquote></p>
10651
10652 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10653 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10654
10655 <p><blockquote>
10656 % ./hw-support-lookup
10657 <br>pcmciautils
10658 <br>%
10659 </blockquote></p>
10660
10661 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10662 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10663 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10664
10665 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10666 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10667 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10668 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10669 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10670 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10671 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10672 see if it work.</p>
10673
10674 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10675 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10676 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10677 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10678
10679       </div>
10680       <div class="tags">
10681
10682
10683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10684
10685
10686       </div>
10687     </div>
10688     <div class="padding"></div>
10689
10690     <div class="entry">
10691       <div class="title">
10692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
10693       </div>
10694       <div class="date">
10695         14th January 2013
10696       </div>
10697       <div class="body">
10698         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10699 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10700 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10701 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10702 in
10703 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10704 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10705
10706 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10707
10708 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10709 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10710 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10711 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
10712 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
10713 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
10714
10715 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10716 this shell script:</p>
10717
10718 <pre>
10719 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10720 </pre>
10721
10722 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10723 using modinfo:</p>
10724
10725 <pre>
10726 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10727 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10728 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10729 %
10730 </pre>
10731
10732 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10733
10734 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10735 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10736
10737 <p><blockquote>
10738 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10739 </blockquote></p>
10740
10741 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10742
10743 <pre>
10744  v   00008086  (vendor)
10745  d   00002770  (device)
10746  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10747  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10748  bc  06        (bus class)
10749  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10750  i   00        (interface)
10751 </pre>
10752
10753 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10754 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10755 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10756 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10757
10758 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10759 means.</p>
10760
10761 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10762
10763 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10764 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10765
10766 <p><blockquote>
10767 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10768 </blockquote></p>
10769
10770 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10771
10772 <pre>
10773  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10774  p    0001  (device product)
10775  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10776  dc     09  (device class)
10777  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10778  dp     00  (device protocol)
10779  ic     09  (interface class)
10780  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10781  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10782 </pre>
10783
10784 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10785 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10786 these alias entries show up:</p>
10787
10788 <p><blockquote>
10789 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10790 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10791 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10792 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10793 </blockquote></p>
10794
10795 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10796 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10797 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10798
10799 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10800
10801 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10802 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10803
10804 <p><blockquote>
10805 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10806 </blockquote></p>
10807
10808 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10809
10810 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10811
10812 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10813 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10814 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10815
10816 <p><blockquote>
10817 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10818 </blockquote></p>
10819
10820 <p>The values present are</p>
10821
10822 <pre>
10823  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10824  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10825  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10826  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10827  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10828  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10829  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10830  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10831  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10832  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10833  ct   10             (chassis type)
10834  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10835 </pre>
10836
10837 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10838 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10839
10840 <pre>
10841   3 Desktop
10842   4 Low Profile Desktop
10843   5 Pizza Box
10844   6 Mini Tower
10845   7 Tower
10846   8 Portable
10847   9 Laptop
10848  10 Notebook
10849  11 Hand Held
10850  12 Docking Station
10851  13 All In One
10852  14 Sub Notebook
10853  15 Space-saving
10854  16 Lunch Box
10855  17 Main Server Chassis
10856  18 Expansion Chassis
10857  19 Sub Chassis
10858  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10859  21 Peripheral Chassis
10860  22 RAID Chassis
10861  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10862  24 Sealed-case PC
10863  25 Multi-system
10864  26 CompactPCI
10865  27 AdvancedTCA
10866  28 Blade
10867  29 Blade Enclosing
10868 </pre>
10869
10870 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10871 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10872 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10873
10874 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10875
10876 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10877 test machine:</p>
10878
10879 <p><blockquote>
10880 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10881 </blockquote></p>
10882
10883 <p>The values present are</p>
10884
10885 <pre>
10886   ty  01  (type)
10887   pr  00  (prototype)
10888   id  00  (id)
10889   ex  00  (extra)
10890 </pre>
10891
10892 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10893 the valid values are.</p>
10894
10895 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10896
10897 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10898 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10899 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10900 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10901 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10902 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10903 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10904
10905 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10906
10907 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10908 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10909
10910 <pre>
10911   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10912     echo "$id" ; \
10913     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10914   done
10915 </pre>
10916
10917 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10918 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10919
10920 <pre>
10921   acpi:ACPI0003:
10922     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10923   acpi:device:
10924   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10925   acpi:IBM0068:
10926     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10927     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10928     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10929     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10930   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10931     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10932     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10933     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10934   [...]
10935 </pre>
10936
10937 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10938 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10939 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10940 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10941
10942 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10943 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10944 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10945
10946       </div>
10947       <div class="tags">
10948
10949
10950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10951
10952
10953       </div>
10954     </div>
10955     <div class="padding"></div>
10956
10957     <div class="entry">
10958       <div class="title">
10959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
10960       </div>
10961       <div class="date">
10962         10th January 2013
10963       </div>
10964       <div class="body">
10965         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10966 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10967 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10968 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
10969 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
10970 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
10971 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10972 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
10973 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10974 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
10975 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10976 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
10977 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10978 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
10979 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10980 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
10981 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
10982 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
10983
10984       </div>
10985       <div class="tags">
10986
10987
10988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10989
10990
10991       </div>
10992     </div>
10993     <div class="padding"></div>
10994
10995     <div class="entry">
10996       <div class="title">
10997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
10998       </div>
10999       <div class="date">
11000          9th January 2013
11001       </div>
11002       <div class="body">
11003         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11004 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11005 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11006 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11007 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11008 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11009 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11010 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11011 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11012 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11013 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11014
11015 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11016 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11017 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11018 simple:
11019
11020 <ul>
11021
11022 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11023   starting when a user log in.</li>
11024
11025 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11026   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11027
11028 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11029   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11030   packages.</li>
11031
11032 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11033   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11034
11035 </ul>
11036
11037 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11038 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11039 discover database to find packages and
11040 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11041 packages.</p>
11042
11043 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11044 draft package is now checked into
11045 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11046 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11047 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11048 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11049 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11050 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11051 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11052 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11053 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11054 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11055 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11056 because of the freeze).</p>
11057
11058 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11059 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11060 inserted):</p>
11061
11062 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11063
11064 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11065 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11066 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11067
11068 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11069 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11070 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11071 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11072 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11073 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11074 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11075
11076 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11077 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11078 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11079 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11080 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11081 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11082 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11083 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11084 not be installed?</p>
11085
11086 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11087 please send me an email. :)</p>
11088
11089       </div>
11090       <div class="tags">
11091
11092
11093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11094
11095
11096       </div>
11097     </div>
11098     <div class="padding"></div>
11099
11100     <div class="entry">
11101       <div class="title">
11102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
11103       </div>
11104       <div class="date">
11105          2nd January 2013
11106       </div>
11107       <div class="body">
11108         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11109 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11110 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11111 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11112 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11113 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11114 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11115 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11116 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11117 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11118
11119 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11120 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11121 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11122
11123       </div>
11124       <div class="tags">
11125
11126
11127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11128
11129
11130       </div>
11131     </div>
11132     <div class="padding"></div>
11133
11134     <div class="entry">
11135       <div class="title">
11136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11137       </div>
11138       <div class="date">
11139         28th December 2012
11140       </div>
11141       <div class="body">
11142         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11143 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11144 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11145 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11146 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11147 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11148 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11149 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11150 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11151 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11152 followed by many others. :)</p>
11153
11154 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11155 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11156 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11157 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11158
11159       </div>
11160       <div class="tags">
11161
11162
11163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11164
11165
11166       </div>
11167     </div>
11168     <div class="padding"></div>
11169
11170     <div class="entry">
11171       <div class="title">
11172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
11173       </div>
11174       <div class="date">
11175         25th December 2012
11176       </div>
11177       <div class="body">
11178         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11179 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11180
11181 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11182 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11183 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11184 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11185 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11186 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11187 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11188 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11189 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11190 name.</p>
11191
11192 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11193 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11194 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11195
11196 <blockquote><pre>
11197 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11198 cd bitcoin
11199 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11200 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11201 </pre></blockquote>
11202
11203 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11204 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11205 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11206 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11207 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11208 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11209 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11210 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11211 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11212
11213 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11214 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11215 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11216
11217       </div>
11218       <div class="tags">
11219
11220
11221         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>.
11222
11223
11224       </div>
11225     </div>
11226     <div class="padding"></div>
11227
11228     <div class="entry">
11229       <div class="title">
11230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11231       </div>
11232       <div class="date">
11233         21st December 2012
11234       </div>
11235       <div class="body">
11236         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11237 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11238 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11239 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11240 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11241 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11242 is now maintained by a
11243 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11244 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11245 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11246 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11247 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11248 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11249 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11250 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11251 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11252 Corallo in a
11253 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11254 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11255 Debian package.</p>
11256
11257 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11258 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11259 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11260 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11261 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11262 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11263 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11264 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11265 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11266 new version to unstable.
11267
11268 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11269 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11270 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11271 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11272 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11273 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11274 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11275 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11276 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11277 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11278 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11279 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11280 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11281 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11282 have not tested them.</p>
11283
11284 <p>My
11285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11286 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11287 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11288 years ago, as can be
11289 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11290 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11291 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11292 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11293 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11294 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11295 the same address as last time,
11296 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11297
11298       </div>
11299       <div class="tags">
11300
11301
11302         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>.
11303
11304
11305       </div>
11306     </div>
11307     <div class="padding"></div>
11308
11309     <div class="entry">
11310       <div class="title">
11311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
11312       </div>
11313       <div class="date">
11314         18th December 2012
11315       </div>
11316       <div class="body">
11317         <p>A few days ago I came across
11318 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11319 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11320 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11321 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11322 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11323 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11324 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11325 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11326 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11327
11328 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11329 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11330 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11331 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11332
11333 <blockquote><pre>
11334 2004-05-27 Book Store
11335       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11336       Liabilities:Visa
11337 </pre></blockquote>
11338
11339 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11340 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11341 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11342 Spang</a>,
11343 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11344 Keen</a>,
11345 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11346 Cantino</a> and
11347 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11348 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11349 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11350 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11351 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11352
11353 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11354 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11355 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11356 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11357 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11358
11359 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11360 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11361 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11362 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11363 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11364 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11365 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11366 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11367 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11368
11369       </div>
11370       <div class="tags">
11371
11372
11373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11374
11375
11376       </div>
11377     </div>
11378     <div class="padding"></div>
11379
11380     <div class="entry">
11381       <div class="title">
11382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
11383       </div>
11384       <div class="date">
11385          6th December 2012
11386       </div>
11387       <div class="body">
11388         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11389 Oslo</a>, we use the
11390 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11391 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11392 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11393 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11394 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11395 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11396 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11397 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11398 Python.</p>
11399
11400 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11401 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11402 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11403 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11404 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11405 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11406
11407 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11408 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11409 user currently logged in:</p>
11410
11411 <blockquote><pre>
11412 #!/usr/bin/env python
11413 import getpass
11414 import xmlrpclib
11415 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11416 username = getpass.getuser()
11417 password = getpass.getpass()
11418 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11419 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11420 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11421 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11422 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11423 print result
11424 </pre></blockquote>
11425
11426 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11427 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11428
11429       </div>
11430       <div class="tags">
11431
11432
11433         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
11434
11435
11436       </div>
11437     </div>
11438     <div class="padding"></div>
11439
11440     <div class="entry">
11441       <div class="title">
11442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
11443       </div>
11444       <div class="date">
11445         17th November 2012
11446       </div>
11447       <div class="body">
11448         <p>While working on a
11449 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11450 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11451 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11452 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11453 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11454 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11455
11456 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11457 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11458 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11459 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11460 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11461 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11462 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11463 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11464 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11465 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11466 arguments.</p>
11467
11468 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11469 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11470 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11471 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11472 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11473 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11474 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11475 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11476
11477 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11478 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11479 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11480 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11481 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11482 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11483 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11484 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11485 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11486 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11487 correct right holder.</p>
11488
11489 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11490 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11491 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11492 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11493 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11494 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11495 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11496 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11497 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11498 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11499 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11500 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11501 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11502 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11503
11504 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11505 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11506 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11507
11508 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11509 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11510
11511       </div>
11512       <div class="tags">
11513
11514
11515         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11516
11517
11518       </div>
11519     </div>
11520     <div class="padding"></div>
11521
11522     <div class="entry">
11523       <div class="title">
11524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11525       </div>
11526       <div class="date">
11527         14th November 2012
11528       </div>
11529       <div class="body">
11530         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11531 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11532 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11533 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11534 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11535 the people behind the German
11536 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11537 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11538 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11539
11540 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11541
11542 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11543 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11544 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11545
11546 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11547 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11548 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11549 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11550 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11551 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11552
11553 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11554 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11555 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11556 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11557 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11558 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11559 project.</p>
11560
11561 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11562 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11563 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11564
11565 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11566 project?</strong></p>
11567
11568 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11569
11570 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11571 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11572 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11573 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11574 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11575 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11576 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11577 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11578 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11579 parents.</p>
11580
11581 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11582 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11583 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11584 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11585 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11586 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11587 Germany.</p>
11588
11589 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11590 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11591 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11592
11593 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11594 Edu?</strong></p>
11595
11596 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11597 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11598
11599 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11600 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11601 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11602 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11603 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11604 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11605 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11606 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11607 teachers, parents...</p>
11608
11609 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11610 Edu?</strong></p>
11611
11612 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11613 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11614
11615 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11616 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11617 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11618 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11619 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11620
11621 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11622 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11623 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11624 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11625 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11626 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11627 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11628
11629 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11630
11631 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11632 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11633 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11634 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11635
11636 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11637 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11638
11639 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11640 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11641 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11642 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11643 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11644
11645 <ul>
11646
11647 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11648 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11649 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11650
11651 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11652 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11653 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11654 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11655 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11656 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11657 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11658
11659 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11660 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11661 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11662 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11663
11664 </ul>
11665
11666       </div>
11667       <div class="tags">
11668
11669
11670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11671
11672
11673       </div>
11674     </div>
11675     <div class="padding"></div>
11676
11677     <div class="entry">
11678       <div class="title">
11679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
11680       </div>
11681       <div class="date">
11682          4th November 2012
11683       </div>
11684       <div class="body">
11685         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11686 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11687 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11688 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11689 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11690 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11691 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11692 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11693 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11694 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11695 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11696 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11697 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11698 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11699
11700 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11701 that the community already seem to have
11702 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11703 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11704 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11705 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11706 wealth is available.</p>
11707
11708       </div>
11709       <div class="tags">
11710
11711
11712         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11713
11714
11715       </div>
11716     </div>
11717     <div class="padding"></div>
11718
11719     <div class="entry">
11720       <div class="title">
11721         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
11722       </div>
11723       <div class="date">
11724         26th October 2012
11725       </div>
11726       <div class="body">
11727         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11728 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11729 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11730 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11731 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11732 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11733 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11734 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11735 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11736 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11737 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11738 it every time.</p>
11739
11740 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11741 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11742 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11743 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11744 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11745 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11746 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11747 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11748 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11749 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11750 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11751 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11752
11753 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11754 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11755 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11756 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11757 article: First the unplanned outage:
11758
11759 <blockquote><pre>
11760 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11761 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11762 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11763 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11764 Duration:    40 minutes
11765 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11766 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11767              a cluster failover.
11768
11769 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11770              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11771 Technician:  [xxx]
11772 </pre></blockquote>
11773
11774 Next the planned outage:
11775
11776 <blockquote><pre>
11777 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11778 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11779 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11780 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11781 Duration:    10 hours
11782 Scope:       H2 Transport
11783 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11784              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11785              4510s.
11786 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11787              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11788              connectivity.
11789 Technician:  [xxx]
11790 </pre></blockquote>
11791
11792 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11793 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11794 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11795 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11796 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11797 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11798 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11799
11800 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11801 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11802 university too.  We do register
11803 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11804 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11805 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11806 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11807 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11808
11809       </div>
11810       <div class="tags">
11811
11812
11813         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
11814
11815
11816       </div>
11817     </div>
11818     <div class="padding"></div>
11819
11820     <div class="entry">
11821       <div class="title">
11822         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
11823       </div>
11824       <div class="date">
11825         22nd October 2012
11826       </div>
11827       <div class="body">
11828         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11829 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11830 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11831 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11832 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11833 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11834 background information is available in Norwegian from
11835 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11836 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11837 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11838 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11839 willing to
11840 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11841 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11842 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11843 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11844 sounded like
11845 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11846 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11847 later.</p>
11848
11849 <p>And thought this action is
11850 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11851 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11852 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11853 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11854 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11855 rights.</p>
11856
11857 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11858 unacceptable terms.  For example
11859 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11860 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11861 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11862 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11863 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11864
11865 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11866 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11867 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11868 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11869 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11870 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11871 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11872 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11873 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11874 reading two opinions from
11875 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11876 Phipps</a> and
11877 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11878 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11879 details about the original story.</p>
11880
11881       </div>
11882       <div class="tags">
11883
11884
11885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
11886
11887
11888       </div>
11889     </div>
11890     <div class="padding"></div>
11891
11892     <div class="entry">
11893       <div class="title">
11894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11895       </div>
11896       <div class="date">
11897         18th October 2012
11898       </div>
11899       <div class="body">
11900         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11901 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11902 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11903 across a marvellous drawing by
11904 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11905 visualising some of what is going on.
11906
11907 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11908 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11909
11910 <blockquote>
11911 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11912 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11913 </blockquote>
11914
11915 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11916 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11917 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11918 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11919 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11920 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11921
11922       </div>
11923       <div class="tags">
11924
11925
11926         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11927
11928
11929       </div>
11930     </div>
11931     <div class="padding"></div>
11932
11933     <div class="entry">
11934       <div class="title">
11935         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11936       </div>
11937       <div class="date">
11938         12th October 2012
11939       </div>
11940       <div class="body">
11941         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11942 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11943 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11944 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11945 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11946 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11947 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11948 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11949 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11950 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11951 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11952 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11953 matter".</p>
11954
11955 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11956 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11957 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11958 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11959 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11960 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11961 to argue its side.</p>
11962
11963 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
11964 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
11965 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
11966 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
11967
11968 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
11969 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
11970 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
11971
11972       </div>
11973       <div class="tags">
11974
11975
11976         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
11977
11978
11979       </div>
11980     </div>
11981     <div class="padding"></div>
11982
11983     <div class="entry">
11984       <div class="title">
11985         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
11986       </div>
11987       <div class="date">
11988          3rd October 2012
11989       </div>
11990       <div class="body">
11991         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
11992 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
11993 the computer science book collection available in his local
11994 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
11995 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
11996 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
11997 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
11998 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
11999 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
12000 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
12001 recently published books.</p>
12002
12003 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
12004 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
12005 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
12006 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
12007 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
12008 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
12009 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
12010 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
12011 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
12012 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
12013 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
12014 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
12015 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
12016 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
12017 for the library that evening.</p>
12018
12019 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
12020 going to know that for example
12021 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
12022 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
12023 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
12024 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
12025 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
12026 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
12027 book right away.</p>
12028
12029       </div>
12030       <div class="tags">
12031
12032
12033         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12034
12035
12036       </div>
12037     </div>
12038     <div class="padding"></div>
12039
12040     <div class="entry">
12041       <div class="title">
12042         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
12043       </div>
12044       <div class="date">
12045         23rd September 2012
12046       </div>
12047       <div class="body">
12048         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12049 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12050 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12051 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12052 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12053 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12054
12055 When I started, I
12056 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12057 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12058 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12059 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12060 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12061 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12062 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12063
12064 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12065
12066 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12067 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12068 the project files currently available from
12069 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12070
12071 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12072 the updated
12073 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12074 and
12075 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12076 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12077 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12078 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12079
12080       </div>
12081       <div class="tags">
12082
12083
12084         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12085
12086
12087       </div>
12088     </div>
12089     <div class="padding"></div>
12090
12091     <div class="entry">
12092       <div class="title">
12093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12094       </div>
12095       <div class="date">
12096         17th September 2012
12097       </div>
12098       <div class="body">
12099         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12100 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12101 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12102 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12103 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12104 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12105 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12106
12107 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12108
12109 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12110 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12111 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12112 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12113 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12114 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12115 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12116 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12117 training is anyway very important</p>
12118
12119 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12120 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12121 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12122 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12123 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12124
12125 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12126 project?</strong></p>
12127
12128 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12129 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12130 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12131 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12132 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12133 hole.</p>
12134
12135 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12136 Edu?</strong></p>
12137
12138 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12139 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12140 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12141 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12142 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12143 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12144 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12145 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12146 hassle.</p>
12147
12148 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12149 Edu?</strong></p>
12150
12151 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12152 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12153 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12154 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12155 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12156 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12157 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12158 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12159
12160 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12161
12162 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12163 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12164 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12165 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12166 has the same...</p>
12167
12168 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12169 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12170 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12171 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12172
12173 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12174 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12175
12176 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12177 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12178 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12179
12180 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12181 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12182 don't.</p>
12183
12184 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12185 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12186 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12187 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12188 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12189 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12190 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12191
12192       </div>
12193       <div class="tags">
12194
12195
12196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12197
12198
12199       </div>
12200     </div>
12201     <div class="padding"></div>
12202
12203     <div class="entry">
12204       <div class="title">
12205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12206       </div>
12207       <div class="date">
12208         15th September 2012
12209       </div>
12210       <div class="body">
12211         <p>After the
12212 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12213 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12214 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12215 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12216 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12217 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12218 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12219 was
12220 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
12221 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12222
12223 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12224 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12225 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12226 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12227 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12228 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12229 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12230 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12231
12232 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12233 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12234 IETF.</p>
12235
12236       </div>
12237       <div class="tags">
12238
12239
12240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12241
12242
12243       </div>
12244     </div>
12245     <div class="padding"></div>
12246
12247     <div class="entry">
12248       <div class="title">
12249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12250       </div>
12251       <div class="date">
12252         12th September 2012
12253       </div>
12254       <div class="body">
12255         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12256 publication of of
12257 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12258 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12259 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12260 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12261 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12262 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12263 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12264 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12265 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12266 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12267
12268 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12269 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12270 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12271 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12272
12273 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12274 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12275
12276       </div>
12277       <div class="tags">
12278
12279
12280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12281
12282
12283       </div>
12284     </div>
12285     <div class="padding"></div>
12286
12287     <div class="entry">
12288       <div class="title">
12289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12290       </div>
12291       <div class="date">
12292          7th September 2012
12293       </div>
12294       <div class="body">
12295         <p>As I
12296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12297 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12298 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12299 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12300 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12301
12302 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12303 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12304 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12305 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12306
12307 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12308 PostScript formats at
12309 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12310 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12311
12312       </div>
12313       <div class="tags">
12314
12315
12316         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>.
12317
12318
12319       </div>
12320     </div>
12321     <div class="padding"></div>
12322
12323     <div class="entry">
12324       <div class="title">
12325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
12326       </div>
12327       <div class="date">
12328         23rd August 2012
12329       </div>
12330       <div class="body">
12331         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12332 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12333 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12334 revisit the great site
12335 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12336 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12337 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12338
12339       </div>
12340       <div class="tags">
12341
12342
12343         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12344
12345
12346       </div>
12347     </div>
12348     <div class="padding"></div>
12349
12350     <div class="entry">
12351       <div class="title">
12352         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
12353       </div>
12354       <div class="date">
12355         17th August 2012
12356       </div>
12357       <div class="body">
12358         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12359 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12360 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12361 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12362 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12363 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12364 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12365 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12366 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12367 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12368 summer I
12369 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12370 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12371 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12372
12373 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12374 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12375 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12376 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12377 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12378 progress:</p>
12379
12380 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12381
12382 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12383 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12384 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12385 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12386 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12387 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12388
12389 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12390 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12391 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12392 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12393 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12394 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12395 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12396 project files currently available from <a
12397 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12398
12399 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12400 the updated
12401 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12402 and
12403 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12404 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12405 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12406 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12407
12408       </div>
12409       <div class="tags">
12410
12411
12412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12413
12414
12415       </div>
12416     </div>
12417     <div class="padding"></div>
12418
12419     <div class="entry">
12420       <div class="title">
12421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
12422       </div>
12423       <div class="date">
12424         10th August 2012
12425       </div>
12426       <div class="body">
12427         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12428 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12429 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12430 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12431 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12432 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12433 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12434 case for the language
12435 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12436 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12437
12438 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12439 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12440 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12441 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12442 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12443
12444 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12445 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12446 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12447 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12448 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12449 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12450 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12451 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12452 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12453 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12454
12455 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12456 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12457 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12458 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12459 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12460 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12461 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12462 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12463 at the same time. :(</p>
12464
12465 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12466 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12467 processors. :(</p>
12468
12469 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12470
12471       </div>
12472       <div class="tags">
12473
12474
12475         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12476
12477
12478       </div>
12479     </div>
12480     <div class="padding"></div>
12481
12482     <div class="entry">
12483       <div class="title">
12484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12485       </div>
12486       <div class="date">
12487         31st July 2012
12488       </div>
12489       <div class="body">
12490         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12491 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12492 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12493 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12494 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12495 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12496 out.</p>
12497
12498 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12499 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12500
12501 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12502 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12503 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12504 available from
12505 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12506 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12507 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12508 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12509 Squeeze.</p>
12510
12511 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12512 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12513 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12514 problems.</p>
12515
12516 <ul>
12517
12518 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12519    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12520    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12521    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12522    index references spanning several pages (See
12523    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12524    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12525    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12526
12527 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12528    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12529    #683163</a>).</li>
12530
12531 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12532    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12533    footnote and text body, see
12534    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12535    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12536    refs listed are not right).</li>
12537
12538 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12539
12540 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12541    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12542
12543 </ul>
12544
12545 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12546 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12547 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12548
12549 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12550
12551       </div>
12552       <div class="tags">
12553
12554
12555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12556
12557
12558       </div>
12559     </div>
12560     <div class="padding"></div>
12561
12562     <div class="entry">
12563       <div class="title">
12564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
12565       </div>
12566       <div class="date">
12567         21st July 2012
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="body">
12570         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12572 norwegian version</a> of the book
12573 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12574 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12575 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12576 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12577 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12578
12579 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12580 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12581 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12582 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12583 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12584 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12585 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12586 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12587 print. :)</p>
12588
12589 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12590 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12591 language.</p>
12592
12593       </div>
12594       <div class="tags">
12595
12596
12597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12598
12599
12600       </div>
12601     </div>
12602     <div class="padding"></div>
12603
12604     <div class="entry">
12605       <div class="title">
12606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
12607       </div>
12608       <div class="date">
12609         16th July 2012
12610       </div>
12611       <div class="body">
12612         <p>I am currently working on a
12613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12614 to translate</a> the book
12615 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12616 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12617 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12618 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12619 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12620 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12621 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12622
12623 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12624 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12625 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12626 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12627 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12628 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12629 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12630 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12631 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12632
12633       </div>
12634       <div class="tags">
12635
12636
12637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12638
12639
12640       </div>
12641     </div>
12642     <div class="padding"></div>
12643
12644     <div class="entry">
12645       <div class="title">
12646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12647       </div>
12648       <div class="date">
12649          9th July 2012
12650       </div>
12651       <div class="body">
12652         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12653 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12654 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12655 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12656 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12657 to adjust and scale the just released
12658 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12659 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12660 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12661
12662 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12663
12664 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12665 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12666 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12667 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12668 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12669 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12670 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12671 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12672
12673 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12674 project?</strong></p>
12675
12676 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12677 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12678 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12679 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12680 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12681 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12682
12683 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12684 Edu?</strong></p>
12685
12686 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12687 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12688 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12689 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12690 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12691 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12692 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12693 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12694 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12695 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12696 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12697 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12698 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12699 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12700 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12701 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12702 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12703 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12704 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12705 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12706 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12707 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12708 quicker to update.
12709
12710 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12711 Edu?</strong></p>
12712
12713 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12714 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12715 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12716 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12717 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12718 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12719
12720 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12721 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12722 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12723 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12724 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12725 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12726 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12727 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12728 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12729 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12730 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12731 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12732 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12733 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12734 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12735
12736 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12737 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12738 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12739 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12740 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12741 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12742 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12743 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12744
12745 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12746 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12747 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12748 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12749 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12750 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12751 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12752 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12753 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12754 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12755 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12756 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12757 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12758 sound file.</p>
12759
12760 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12761 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12762 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12763 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12764 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12765 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12766 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12767 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12768 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12769
12770 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12771
12772 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12773 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12774 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12775 )</p>
12776
12777 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12778 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12779
12780 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12781 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12782 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12783 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12784 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12785 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12786 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12787 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12788 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12789 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12790 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12791 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12792 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12793 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12794 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12795
12796 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12797 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12798 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12799 management with Airtime</a>,
12800 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12801 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12802 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12803 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12804 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12805
12806       </div>
12807       <div class="tags">
12808
12809
12810         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12811
12812
12813       </div>
12814     </div>
12815     <div class="padding"></div>
12816
12817     <div class="entry">
12818       <div class="title">
12819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12820       </div>
12821       <div class="date">
12822          8th July 2012
12823       </div>
12824       <div class="body">
12825         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12826 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12827 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12828 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12829 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12830 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12831 Steinberg in his blog post
12832 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12833 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12834 spending of your tax money.</p>
12835
12836 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12837 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12838 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12839 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12840 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12841 purchases.</p>
12842
12843       </div>
12844       <div class="tags">
12845
12846
12847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12848
12849
12850       </div>
12851     </div>
12852     <div class="padding"></div>
12853
12854     <div class="entry">
12855       <div class="title">
12856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12857       </div>
12858       <div class="date">
12859          7th July 2012
12860       </div>
12861       <div class="body">
12862         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12863 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12864 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12865 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12866 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12867 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12868 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12869 receive.  The software is
12870
12871 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12872 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12873 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12874 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12875 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12876 Windows</a>.</p>
12877
12878 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12879 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12880
12881 <p><ul>
12882
12883   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12884     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12885
12886   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12887     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12888     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12889     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12890     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12891     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12892     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12893     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12894     </li>
12895
12896   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12897     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12898
12899   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12900     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12901
12902   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12903     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12904
12905   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12906
12907   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12908     formats </li>
12909
12910   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12911     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12912     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12913     (as separate sets)</li>
12914
12915   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12916     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12917     percentage)</li>
12918
12919   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12920     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12921     memory):
12922     <ul>
12923       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12924       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12925       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12926       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12927       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12928       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12929       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12930       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12931       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12932       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12933           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12934           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12935           activity)</li>
12936       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12937       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12938     </ul></li>
12939
12940   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12941     <ul>
12942       <li>Break periods</li>
12943       <li>For teacher(s):
12944         <ul>
12945           <li>Not available periods</li>
12946           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12947           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12948           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12949           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12950           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12951
12952           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12953             days per week</li>
12954         </ul></li>
12955       <li>For students (sets):
12956         <ul>
12957           <li>Not available periods</li>
12958           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12959           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12960           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12961           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12962           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12963
12964           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12965             days per week</li>
12966         </ul></li>
12967       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
12968         <ul>
12969           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
12970           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
12971           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
12972           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
12973           <li>End(s) students day</li>
12974           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
12975           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
12976             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
12977           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
12978           <li>Not overlapping</li>
12979           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
12980           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
12981         </ul></li>
12982     </ul></li>
12983
12984   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
12985     <ul>
12986       <li>Room not available periods</li>
12987       <li>For teacher(s):
12988         <ul>
12989           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12990           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12991           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12992         </ul>
12993       </li>
12994
12995       <li>For students (sets):
12996         <ul>
12997           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12998           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12999           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13000         </ul>
13001       </li>
13002       <li>Preferred room(s):
13003         <ul>
13004           <li>For a subject</li>
13005           <li>For an activity tag</li>
13006           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
13007           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
13008         </ul>
13009       </li>
13010
13011       <li>For a set of activities:
13012         <ul>
13013           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
13014         </ul>
13015       </li>
13016     </ul>
13017   </li>
13018 </ul></p>
13019
13020 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
13021 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
13022 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
13023 manually, check it out.
13024
13025 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
13026 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
13027 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
13028 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
13029 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
13030 section</a>.</p>
13031
13032       </div>
13033       <div class="tags">
13034
13035
13036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13037
13038
13039       </div>
13040     </div>
13041     <div class="padding"></div>
13042
13043     <div class="entry">
13044       <div class="title">
13045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
13046       </div>
13047       <div class="date">
13048          3rd July 2012
13049       </div>
13050       <div class="body">
13051         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13052 project (Norwegian version of
13053 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13054 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13055 a problem with the municipalities using
13056 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13057 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13058 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13059 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13060 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13061 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13062 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13063 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13064 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13065 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13066 the From: header.</p>
13067
13068 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13069 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13070 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13071 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13072 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13073 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13074 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13075 behaviour.</p>
13076
13077 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13078 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13079 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13080 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13081 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13082 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13083 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13084
13085       </div>
13086       <div class="tags">
13087
13088
13089         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13090
13091
13092       </div>
13093     </div>
13094     <div class="padding"></div>
13095
13096     <div class="entry">
13097       <div class="title">
13098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
13099       </div>
13100       <div class="date">
13101         26th June 2012
13102       </div>
13103       <div class="body">
13104         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13105 another interview with the people behind
13106 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13107 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13108 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13109 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13110 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13111 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13112 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13113
13114 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13115
13116 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13117 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13118 ICT in schools</p>
13119
13120 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13121 project?</strong></p>
13122
13123 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13124 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13125 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13126 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13127
13128 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13129 Edu?</strong></p>
13130
13131 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13132 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13133 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13134 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13135
13136 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13137 Edu?</strong></p>
13138
13139 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13140 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13141 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13142 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13143 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13144 technologies in school.</p>
13145
13146 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13147
13148 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13149 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13150 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13151
13152 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13153 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13154
13155 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13156 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13157 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13158 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13159
13160 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13161 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13162 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13163
13164 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13165 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13166 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13167 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13168 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13169 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13170 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13171 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13172 working there.</p>
13173
13174       </div>
13175       <div class="tags">
13176
13177
13178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13179
13180
13181       </div>
13182     </div>
13183     <div class="padding"></div>
13184
13185     <div class="entry">
13186       <div class="title">
13187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13188       </div>
13189       <div class="date">
13190         24th June 2012
13191       </div>
13192       <div class="body">
13193         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13194 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13195 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13196 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13197 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13198 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13199 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13200 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13201 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13202 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13203 missing in my book.</p>
13204
13205 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13206 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13207 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13208 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13209 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13210 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13211 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13212
13213       </div>
13214       <div class="tags">
13215
13216
13217         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>.
13218
13219
13220       </div>
13221     </div>
13222     <div class="padding"></div>
13223
13224     <div class="entry">
13225       <div class="title">
13226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
13227       </div>
13228       <div class="date">
13229         11th June 2012
13230       </div>
13231       <div class="body">
13232         <p>During my work on
13233 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13234 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13235 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13236 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13237 explanation.</p>
13238
13239 <p><ul>
13240
13241 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13242 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13243 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13244 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13245 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13246 installation.</li>
13247
13248 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13249 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13250 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13251 at least try to enable it for these services:
13252 <ul>
13253
13254   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13255     quotas.</li>
13256   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13257   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13258   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13259   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13260   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13261
13262 </ul></li>
13263
13264 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13265 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13266 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13267 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13268
13269 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13270 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13271 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13272
13273 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13274 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13275 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13276 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13277 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13278 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13279
13280 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13281 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13282 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13283 in Wheezy.
13284
13285 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13286 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13287 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13288
13289 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13290 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13291 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13292 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13293
13294 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13295 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13296 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13297 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13298
13299 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13300 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13301 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13302
13303 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13304 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13305 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13306
13307 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13308 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13309 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13310 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13311 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13312
13313 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13314 <ul>
13315
13316 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13317 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13318 <li>and probably more?</li>
13319 </ul></li>
13320
13321 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13322 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13323 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13324 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13325 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13326 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13327 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13328 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13329
13330
13331 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13332 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13333 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13334 use.</li>
13335
13336 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13337 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13338 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13339 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13340 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13341
13342 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13343 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13344 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13345 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13346 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13347 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13348
13349 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13350 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13351 There are at least three implementations,
13352 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13353 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13354 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13355 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13356 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13357 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13358 given room.</li>
13359
13360 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13361 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13362 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13363 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13364 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13365 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13366 investigated.</li>
13367
13368 </ul></p>
13369
13370 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13371 version.</p>
13372
13373       </div>
13374       <div class="tags">
13375
13376
13377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13378
13379
13380       </div>
13381     </div>
13382     <div class="padding"></div>
13383
13384     <div class="entry">
13385       <div class="title">
13386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
13387       </div>
13388       <div class="date">
13389          9th June 2012
13390       </div>
13391       <div class="body">
13392         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13393 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
13394 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13395 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13396 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13397 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13398 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13399 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13400 be willing to pay for.</p>
13401
13402 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13403 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13404 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13405 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13406 Orwell</a>.</p>
13407
13408       </div>
13409       <div class="tags">
13410
13411
13412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
13413
13414
13415       </div>
13416     </div>
13417     <div class="padding"></div>
13418
13419     <div class="entry">
13420       <div class="title">
13421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
13422       </div>
13423       <div class="date">
13424          6th June 2012
13425       </div>
13426       <div class="body">
13427         <p>A few days ago
13428 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13429 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13430 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13431 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13432 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13433 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13434 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13435 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13436 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13437 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13438 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13439
13440 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13441 output:
13442
13443 <blockquote><pre>
13444 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
13445 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
13446 %
13447 </pre></blockquote>
13448
13449 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13450 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13451 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13452
13453       </div>
13454       <div class="tags">
13455
13456
13457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13458
13459
13460       </div>
13461     </div>
13462     <div class="padding"></div>
13463
13464     <div class="entry">
13465       <div class="title">
13466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13467       </div>
13468       <div class="date">
13469          2nd June 2012
13470       </div>
13471       <div class="body">
13472         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13473 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13474 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13475 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13476 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13477 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13478
13479 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13480
13481 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13482 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13483 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13484 by Angela).</p>
13485
13486 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13487 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13488 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13489 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13490 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13491
13492 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13493 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13494 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13495 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13496 skills with communication skills.</p>
13497
13498 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13499 project?</strong></p>
13500
13501 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13502 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13503 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13504 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13505 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13506
13507 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13508 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13509 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13510 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13511 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13512 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13513 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13514 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13515 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13516
13517 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13518 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13519 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13520
13521 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13522
13523 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13524 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13525 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13526 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13527 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13528 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13529 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13530 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13531 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13532 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13533 point.</p>
13534
13535 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13536 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13537 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13538 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13539 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13540 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13541
13542 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13543 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13544 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13545 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13546 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13547 spare time.</p>
13548
13549 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13550 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13551 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13552 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13553 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13554
13555 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13556 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13557 avoidance do exist.</p>
13558
13559 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13560 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13561 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13562 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13563 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13564 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13565 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13566
13567 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13568 Edu?</strong></p>
13569
13570 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13571 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13572 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13573 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13574 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13575 developers, etc.</p>
13576
13577 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13578 Edu?</strong></p>
13579
13580 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13581
13582 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13583 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13584 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13585 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13586 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13587 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13588 contribute).</p>
13589
13590 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13591 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13592 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13593 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13594 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13595 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13596 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13597 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13598 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13599 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13600
13601 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13602
13603 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13604
13605 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13606 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13607 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13608
13609 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13610 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13611 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13612 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13613
13614 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13615 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13616 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13617 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13618 whiteboard.</p>
13619
13620 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13621
13622 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13623 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13624
13625 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13626 enrol people.</p>
13627
13628       </div>
13629       <div class="tags">
13630
13631
13632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13633
13634
13635       </div>
13636     </div>
13637     <div class="padding"></div>
13638
13639     <div class="entry">
13640       <div class="title">
13641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
13642       </div>
13643       <div class="date">
13644          1st June 2012
13645       </div>
13646       <div class="body">
13647         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13648 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13649 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13650 I have learned from colleges here at the
13651 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13652 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13653 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13654 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13655 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13656
13657 <p><pre>
13658 use strict;
13659 use warnings;
13660 use SOAP::Lite;
13661 use Data::Dumper;
13662 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13663 my $App = 'test';
13664 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13665 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13666 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13667     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13668     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13669     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13670     ;
13671 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13672     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13673     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13674     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13675 );
13676 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13677 </pre></p>
13678
13679 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13680
13681 <p><pre>
13682 $VAR1 = {
13683           'Asset' => {
13684                      'Entitlements' => {
13685                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13686                                                             {
13687                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13688                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13689                                                               'Provider' => '',
13690                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13691                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13692                                                             },
13693                                                             {
13694                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13695                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13696                                                               'Provider' => '',
13697                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13698                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13699                                                             },
13700                                                             {
13701                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13702                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13703                                                               'Provider' => '',
13704                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13705                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13706                                                             }
13707                                                           ]
13708                                      },
13709                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13710                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13711                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13712                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13713                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13714                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13715                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13716                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13717                                         }
13718                    }
13719         };
13720 </pre></p>
13721
13722 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13723 service outside the
13724 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13725 documentation</a>, and according to
13726 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13727 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13728 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13729
13730 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13731 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13732
13733       </div>
13734       <div class="tags">
13735
13736
13737         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13738
13739
13740       </div>
13741     </div>
13742     <div class="padding"></div>
13743
13744     <div class="entry">
13745       <div class="title">
13746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13747       </div>
13748       <div class="date">
13749         31st May 2012
13750       </div>
13751       <div class="body">
13752         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13753 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13754 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13755 running Debian Squeeze, where
13756 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13757 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13758 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13759 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13760 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13761 another day.</p>
13762
13763 <p>After calibration, I get a
13764 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13765 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13766 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13767 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13768 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13769 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13770 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13771 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13772 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13773 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13774 and a simple</p>
13775
13776 <p><pre>
13777 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13778 </pre></p>
13779
13780 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13781 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13782 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13783 enough for now.</p>
13784
13785       </div>
13786       <div class="tags">
13787
13788
13789         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13790
13791
13792       </div>
13793     </div>
13794     <div class="padding"></div>
13795
13796     <div class="entry">
13797       <div class="title">
13798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13799       </div>
13800       <div class="date">
13801         27th May 2012
13802       </div>
13803       <div class="body">
13804         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13805 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13806 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13807 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13808 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13809 since then, helping to make sure the
13810 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13811 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13812
13813 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13814
13815 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13816 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13817 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13818 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13819 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13820 our computer network.</p>
13821
13822 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13823 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13824 (4 months).</p>
13825
13826 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13827 project?</strong></p>
13828
13829 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13830 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13831 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13832 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13833 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13834 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13835 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13836 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13837 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13838 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13839 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13840 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13841 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13842 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13843
13844 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13845 Edu?</strong></p>
13846
13847 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13848 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13849 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13850 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13851 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13852 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13853 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13854 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13855
13856 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13857 Edu?</strong></p>
13858
13859 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13860 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13861 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13862 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13863 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13864 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13865 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13866 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13867 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13868 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13869 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13870 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13871
13872 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13873
13874 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13875 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13876 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13877
13878 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13879 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13880
13881 <p><ol>
13882
13883 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13884 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13885 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13886 developing.</li>
13887
13888 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13889 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13890 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13891 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13892 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13893
13894 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13895 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13896 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13897
13898 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13899 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13900 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13901 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13902
13903 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13904 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13905 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13906
13907 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13908
13909 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13910 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13911 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13912 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13913
13914 </ol></p>
13915
13916       </div>
13917       <div class="tags">
13918
13919
13920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13921
13922
13923       </div>
13924     </div>
13925     <div class="padding"></div>
13926
13927     <div class="entry">
13928       <div class="title">
13929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13930       </div>
13931       <div class="date">
13932         26th May 2012
13933       </div>
13934       <div class="body">
13935         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13936 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13937 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13938 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13939 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13940
13941 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13942 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
13943 comment:</p>
13944
13945 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13946 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13947 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13948 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13949 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13950 </blockquote></p>
13951
13952 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13953 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13954 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13955 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13956 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13957 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13958 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13959 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13960 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13961 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13962 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
13963 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
13964 of wasted effort.</p>
13965
13966 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
13967 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
13968 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
13969
13970 <p>See
13971 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
13972 and
13973 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
13974 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
13975 </blockquote></p>
13976
13977       </div>
13978       <div class="tags">
13979
13980
13981         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13982
13983
13984       </div>
13985     </div>
13986     <div class="padding"></div>
13987
13988     <div class="entry">
13989       <div class="title">
13990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
13991       </div>
13992       <div class="date">
13993         18th May 2012
13994       </div>
13995       <div class="body">
13996         <p>In january, I
13997 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
13998 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
13999 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
14000 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
14001 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
14002 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
14003 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
14004 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
14005 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
14006 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
14007
14008 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
14009 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
14010 drivers. :)</p>
14011
14012       </div>
14013       <div class="tags">
14014
14015
14016         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14017
14018
14019       </div>
14020     </div>
14021     <div class="padding"></div>
14022
14023     <div class="entry">
14024       <div class="title">
14025         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
14026       </div>
14027       <div class="date">
14028         13th May 2012
14029       </div>
14030       <div class="body">
14031         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
14032 publish another interview with the people behind
14033 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
14034 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
14035 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
14036 details get right before release.
14037
14038 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14039
14040 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
14041 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
14042 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
14043 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
14044 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
14045 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
14046 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14047 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14048
14049 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14050 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14051 home since 2006.</p>
14052
14053 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14054 project?</strong></p>
14055
14056 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14057 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14058 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14059 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14060 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14061 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14062
14063 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14064 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14065 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14066 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14067 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14068 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14069 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14070 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14071 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14072 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14073 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14074 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14075 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14076 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14077 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14078 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14079
14080 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14081 Edu?</strong></p>
14082
14083 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14084 for me as today.</p>
14085
14086 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14087
14088 <p><ul>
14089
14090 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14091 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14092
14093 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14094 cost.</li>
14095
14096 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14097 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14098 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14099 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14100 server</li>
14101
14102 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14103 school.</li>
14104
14105 </ul></p>
14106
14107 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14108 came up in this way:</p>
14109
14110 <p><ul>
14111
14112 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14113 now.</li>
14114
14115 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14116 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14117 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14118
14119 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14120 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14121 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14122
14123 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14124 different needs.</li>
14125
14126 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14127
14128 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14129 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14130 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14131
14132 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14133 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14134
14135 </ul></p>
14136
14137 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14138 Edu?</strong></p>
14139
14140 <p><ul>
14141
14142 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14143 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14144 whole municipality areas.</li>
14145
14146 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14147 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14148 politicians.</li>
14149
14150 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14151
14152 </ul></p>
14153
14154 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14155
14156 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14157 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14158 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14159 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14160 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14161 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14162
14163 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14164 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14165 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14166 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14167 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14168
14169 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14170 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14171
14172 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14173 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14174 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14175
14176       </div>
14177       <div class="tags">
14178
14179
14180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14181
14182
14183       </div>
14184     </div>
14185     <div class="padding"></div>
14186
14187     <div class="entry">
14188       <div class="title">
14189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
14190       </div>
14191       <div class="date">
14192         30th April 2012
14193       </div>
14194       <div class="body">
14195         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14196 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14197
14198 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14199 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14200 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14201 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14202 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14203 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14204 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14205 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14206 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14207 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14208 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14209 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14210 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14211 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14212 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14213 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14214
14215 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14216 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14217 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14218 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14219 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14220 finally found a Danish supplier
14221 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14222 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14223 days ago.</p>
14224
14225 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14226 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14227 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14228 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14229 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14230 toys.</p>
14231
14232       </div>
14233       <div class="tags">
14234
14235
14236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14237
14238
14239       </div>
14240     </div>
14241     <div class="padding"></div>
14242
14243     <div class="entry">
14244       <div class="title">
14245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
14246       </div>
14247       <div class="date">
14248         26th April 2012
14249       </div>
14250       <div class="body">
14251         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14252 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14253 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14254 that the video editor application included with
14255 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14256 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14257 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14258
14259 <p><blockquote>
14260 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14261 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14262 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14263 </blockquote></p>
14264
14265 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14266
14267 <p><blockquote>
14268 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14269 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14270 </blockquote></p>
14271
14272 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14273 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14274 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14275 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14276 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14277 video.  AMR is
14278 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14279 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14280 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14281 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14282 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14283 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14284 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14285
14286 <p>I know why I prefer
14287 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14288 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14289
14290       </div>
14291       <div class="tags">
14292
14293
14294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14295
14296
14297       </div>
14298     </div>
14299     <div class="padding"></div>
14300
14301     <div class="entry">
14302       <div class="title">
14303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14304       </div>
14305       <div class="date">
14306         19th April 2012
14307       </div>
14308       <div class="body">
14309         <p>Here in Norway, the
14310 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14311 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14312 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14313 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14314 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14315 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14316 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14317 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14318 on the same level.</p>
14319
14320 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14321 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14322 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14323 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14324 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14325 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14326 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14327 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14328 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14329 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14330 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14331 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14332 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14333 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14334 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14335 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14336 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14337 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14338
14339 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14340 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14341 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14342 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14343 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14344 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14345 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14346 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14347
14348 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14349 from Simon Phipps
14350 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14351 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14352
14353 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14354 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14355 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14356 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14357 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14358 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14359 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14360 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14361 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14362
14363       </div>
14364       <div class="tags">
14365
14366
14367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14368
14369
14370       </div>
14371     </div>
14372     <div class="padding"></div>
14373
14374     <div class="entry">
14375       <div class="title">
14376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14377       </div>
14378       <div class="date">
14379         15th April 2012
14380       </div>
14381       <div class="body">
14382         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14383 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14384 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14385 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14386 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14387 up in the recently released
14388 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14389 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14390
14391 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14392
14393 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14394 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14395 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14396 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14397 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14398 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14399
14400 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14401 project?</strong></p>
14402
14403 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14404 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14405 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14406 contributing.</p>
14407
14408 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14409 Edu?</strong></p>
14410
14411 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14412 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14413 Debian Project!</p>
14414
14415 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14416 Edu?</strong></p>
14417
14418 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14419 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14420 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14421 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14422 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14423 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14424 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14425
14426 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14427 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14428
14429 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14430
14431 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14432 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14433 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14434 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14435
14436 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14437 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14438
14439 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14440 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14441 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14442 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14443 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14444 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14445 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14446
14447 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14448 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14449 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14450 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14451 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14452 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14453 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14454 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14455
14456       </div>
14457       <div class="tags">
14458
14459
14460         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14461
14462
14463       </div>
14464     </div>
14465     <div class="padding"></div>
14466
14467     <div class="entry">
14468       <div class="title">
14469         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14470       </div>
14471       <div class="date">
14472          8th April 2012
14473       </div>
14474       <div class="body">
14475         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14476 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14477 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14478 contributor to the
14479 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14480 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14481
14482 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14483
14484 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14485 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14486
14487 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14488 project?</strong></p>
14489
14490 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14491 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14492 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14493 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14494 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14495 "localisation".</p>
14496
14497 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14498 Edu?</strong></p>
14499
14500 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14501 Edu?</strong></p>
14502
14503 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14504 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14505 education system.</p>
14506
14507 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14508 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14509 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14510 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14511
14512 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14513
14514 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14515 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14516 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14517
14518 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14519 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14520
14521 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14522 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14523 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14524
14525       </div>
14526       <div class="tags">
14527
14528
14529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14530
14531
14532       </div>
14533     </div>
14534     <div class="padding"></div>
14535
14536     <div class="entry">
14537       <div class="title">
14538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
14539       </div>
14540       <div class="date">
14541          6th April 2012
14542       </div>
14543       <div class="body">
14544         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14545 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14546 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14547 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14548 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14549 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14550 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14551 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14552 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14553
14554 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14555 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14556 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14557 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14558 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14559 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14560 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14561 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14562
14563 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14564 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14565 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14566 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14567 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14568 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14569 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14570 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14571
14572 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14573 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14574 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14575 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14576 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14577 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14578 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14579 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14580 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14581 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14582
14583 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14584 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14585 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14586 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14587
14588 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14589 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14590
14591 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14592 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14593 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14594 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14595
14596       </div>
14597       <div class="tags">
14598
14599
14600         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14601
14602
14603       </div>
14604     </div>
14605     <div class="padding"></div>
14606
14607     <div class="entry">
14608       <div class="title">
14609         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14610       </div>
14611       <div class="date">
14612          5th April 2012
14613       </div>
14614       <div class="body">
14615         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14616 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14617 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14618 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14619 for schools.  Check out his article
14620 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14621 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14622
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="tags">
14625
14626
14627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14628
14629
14630       </div>
14631     </div>
14632     <div class="padding"></div>
14633
14634     <div class="entry">
14635       <div class="title">
14636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14637       </div>
14638       <div class="date">
14639          1st April 2012
14640       </div>
14641       <div class="body">
14642         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14643 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14644 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14645 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14646
14647 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14648
14649 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14650 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14651 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14652 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14653 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14654 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14655 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14656 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14657
14658 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14659 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14660 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14661 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14662 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14663 the end of April this year.</p>
14664
14665 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14666 project?</strong></p>
14667
14668 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14669 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14670 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14671 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14672 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14673 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14674 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14675 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14676 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14677 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14678 Skolelinux.</p>
14679
14680 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14681 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14682 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14683 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14684 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14685 the admin teachers.</p>
14686
14687 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14688 Edu?</strong></p>
14689
14690 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14691 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14692 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14693
14694 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14695 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14696 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14697 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14698 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14699
14700 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14701 Edu?</strong></p>
14702
14703 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14704
14705 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14706
14707 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14708 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14709 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14710 LibreOffice.</p>
14711
14712 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14713 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14714
14715 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14716 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14717 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14718
14719       </div>
14720       <div class="tags">
14721
14722
14723         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14724
14725
14726       </div>
14727     </div>
14728     <div class="padding"></div>
14729
14730     <div class="entry">
14731       <div class="title">
14732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
14733       </div>
14734       <div class="date">
14735         25th March 2012
14736       </div>
14737       <div class="body">
14738         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14739
14740 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14741 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14742 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14743 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14744 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14745 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14746 and download as a
14747 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14748 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14749
14750 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14751   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
14752     <p>Download video as
14753       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14754 </video></p>
14755
14756       </div>
14757       <div class="tags">
14758
14759
14760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14761
14762
14763       </div>
14764     </div>
14765     <div class="padding"></div>
14766
14767     <div class="entry">
14768       <div class="title">
14769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14770       </div>
14771       <div class="date">
14772         19th March 2012
14773       </div>
14774       <div class="body">
14775         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14776 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14777 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14778 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14779 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14780
14781 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14782
14783 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14784 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14785 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14786 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14787 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14788 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14789 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14790 installations.</p>
14791
14792 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14793 project?</strong></p>
14794
14795 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14796 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14797 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14798 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14799 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14800 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14801 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14802 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14803 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14804
14805 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14806 Edu?</strong></p>
14807
14808 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14809 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14810 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14811 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14812 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14813 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14814 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14815 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14816
14817 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14818 Edu?</strong></p>
14819
14820 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14821 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14822 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14823 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14824 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14825
14826 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14827
14828 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14829 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14830 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14831 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14832 that counts...)</p>
14833
14834 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14835 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14836
14837 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14838 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14839 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14840 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14841 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14842 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14843 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14844 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14845 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14846 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14847 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14848
14849 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14850 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14851 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14852
14853       </div>
14854       <div class="tags">
14855
14856
14857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14858
14859
14860       </div>
14861     </div>
14862     <div class="padding"></div>
14863
14864     <div class="entry">
14865       <div class="title">
14866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14867       </div>
14868       <div class="date">
14869         16th March 2012
14870       </div>
14871       <div class="body">
14872         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14873 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14874 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14875 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14876
14877 <ol>
14878
14879 <li>The documentation is written in a
14880 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14881 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14882 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14883 docbook XML.</li>
14884
14885 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14886 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14887 with the translated text.</li>
14888
14889 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14890 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14891 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14892 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14893 images.</li>
14894
14895 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14896 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14897
14898 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14899 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14900
14901 </ol>
14902
14903 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14904 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14905 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14906 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14907 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14908
14909 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14910 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14911 package</a>.</p>
14912
14913       </div>
14914       <div class="tags">
14915
14916
14917         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14918
14919
14920       </div>
14921     </div>
14922     <div class="padding"></div>
14923
14924     <div class="entry">
14925       <div class="title">
14926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14927       </div>
14928       <div class="date">
14929         11th March 2012
14930       </div>
14931       <div class="body">
14932         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14933 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14934 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14935 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14936 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14937 you have not done so already.</p>
14938
14939 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14940 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14941 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14942 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14943
14944       </div>
14945       <div class="tags">
14946
14947
14948         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14949
14950
14951       </div>
14952     </div>
14953     <div class="padding"></div>
14954
14955     <div class="entry">
14956       <div class="title">
14957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14958       </div>
14959       <div class="date">
14960          9th March 2012
14961       </div>
14962       <div class="body">
14963         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
14964 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
14965 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14966 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
14967 more international audience.</p>
14968
14969 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14970 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
14971 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
14972 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
14973 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
14974 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
14975 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
14976
14977
14978 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14979
14980 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
14981 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
14982 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
14983 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
14984 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
14985 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
14986 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
14987 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
14988 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
14989 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
14990 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
14991
14992 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14993 project?</strong></p>
14994
14995 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
14996 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
14997 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
14998 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
14999 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
15000 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
15001 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
15002 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
15003 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
15004 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
15005 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
15006 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
15007 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
15008
15009 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15010 Edu?</strong></p>
15011
15012 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
15013 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
15014 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
15015 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
15016 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
15017 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
15018 Japan.</p>
15019
15020 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15021 Edu?</strong></p>
15022
15023 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
15024 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
15025 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
15026 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
15027 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
15028 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
15029 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
15030 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
15031 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
15032 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
15033 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
15034 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
15035 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
15036 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
15037 help.</p>
15038
15039 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15040
15041 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
15042 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
15043 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
15044 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
15045 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
15046 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15047 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15048 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15049 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15050 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15051 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15052
15053 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15054 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15055
15056 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15057 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15058 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15059 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15060 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15061 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15062 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15063 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15064 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15065 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15066 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15067 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15068
15069       </div>
15070       <div class="tags">
15071
15072
15073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
15074
15075
15076       </div>
15077     </div>
15078     <div class="padding"></div>
15079
15080     <div class="entry">
15081       <div class="title">
15082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
15083       </div>
15084       <div class="date">
15085          7th March 2012
15086       </div>
15087       <div class="body">
15088         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15089
15090 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15091 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15092 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15093 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15094 download as a
15095 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15096 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15097
15098 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15099   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
15100     <p>Download video as
15101       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15102 </video></p>
15103
15104       </div>
15105       <div class="tags">
15106
15107
15108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15109
15110
15111       </div>
15112     </div>
15113     <div class="padding"></div>
15114
15115     <div class="entry">
15116       <div class="title">
15117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15118       </div>
15119       <div class="date">
15120          4th March 2012
15121       </div>
15122       <div class="body">
15123         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15124 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15125 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15126 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15127 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15128 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15129
15130       </div>
15131       <div class="tags">
15132
15133
15134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15135
15136
15137       </div>
15138     </div>
15139     <div class="padding"></div>
15140
15141     <div class="entry">
15142       <div class="title">
15143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
15144       </div>
15145       <div class="date">
15146          3rd March 2012
15147       </div>
15148       <div class="body">
15149         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15150 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15151 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15152 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15153 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15154 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15155 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15156 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15157 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15158 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15159 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15160 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15161 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15162 year...</p>
15163
15164 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15165 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15166 name,
15167 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15168 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15169 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15170 mean). I've been following
15171 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15172 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15173 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15174 Check it out. :)</p>
15175
15176       </div>
15177       <div class="tags">
15178
15179
15180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15181
15182
15183       </div>
15184     </div>
15185     <div class="padding"></div>
15186
15187     <div class="entry">
15188       <div class="title">
15189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15190       </div>
15191       <div class="date">
15192         27th February 2012
15193       </div>
15194       <div class="body">
15195         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15196 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15197 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15198 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15199 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15200 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15201 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15202
15203       </div>
15204       <div class="tags">
15205
15206
15207         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15208
15209
15210       </div>
15211     </div>
15212     <div class="padding"></div>
15213
15214     <div class="entry">
15215       <div class="title">
15216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15217       </div>
15218       <div class="date">
15219         19th February 2012
15220       </div>
15221       <div class="body">
15222         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15223 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15224 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15225 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15226 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15227 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15228 solution for your school.</p>
15229
15230       </div>
15231       <div class="tags">
15232
15233
15234         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15235
15236
15237       </div>
15238     </div>
15239     <div class="padding"></div>
15240
15241     <div class="entry">
15242       <div class="title">
15243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
15244       </div>
15245       <div class="date">
15246         14th February 2012
15247       </div>
15248       <div class="body">
15249         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15250 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15251 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15252 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15253 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15254 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15255 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15256 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15257 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15258
15259 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15260 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15261 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15262 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15263 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15264
15265 <blockquote><pre>
15266 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15267 do
15268     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15269     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15270 done
15271 </blockquote></pre>
15272
15273 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15274 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15275
15276 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15277
15278 <blockquote><pre>
15279 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15280 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15281 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15282 </blockquote></pre>
15283
15284 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15285 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15286 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15287 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15288 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15289 mounted inside my box.</p>
15290
15291 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15292 Software RAID in the
15293 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15294 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15295 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15296 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15297 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15298 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15299
15300       </div>
15301       <div class="tags">
15302
15303
15304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
15305
15306
15307       </div>
15308     </div>
15309     <div class="padding"></div>
15310
15311     <div class="entry">
15312       <div class="title">
15313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15314       </div>
15315       <div class="date">
15316         13th February 2012
15317       </div>
15318       <div class="body">
15319         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15320 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15321 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15322 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15323 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15324 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15325 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15326 change the global proxy setting by editing
15327 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15328 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15329
15330 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15331 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15332 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15333
15334 <blockquote><pre>
15335 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15336 {
15337    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15338        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15339        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15340       return "DIRECT";
15341    else
15342       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15343 }
15344 </pre></blockquote>
15345
15346 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15347
15348 <blockquote><pre>
15349 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15350 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15351 </pre></blockquote>
15352
15353 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15354 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15355 would be used for
15356 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15357 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15358 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15359 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15360 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15361 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15362 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15363 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15364 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15365 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15366
15367 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15368 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15369 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15370 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15371 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15372 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15373
15374 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15375 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15376 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15377 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15378 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15379 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15380 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15381 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15382 the network setup changes.</p>
15383
15384 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15385 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15386 draft</a> and a
15387 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15388 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15389
15390       </div>
15391       <div class="tags">
15392
15393
15394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15395
15396
15397       </div>
15398     </div>
15399     <div class="padding"></div>
15400
15401     <div class="entry">
15402       <div class="title">
15403         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
15404       </div>
15405       <div class="date">
15406          5th February 2012
15407       </div>
15408       <div class="body">
15409         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15410 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15411 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15412 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15413 in the morning.  This is done using the
15414 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15415
15416 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15417 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15418 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15419 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15420 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15421 the
15422 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15423 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15424 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15425 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15426 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15427
15428 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15429 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15430 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15431 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15432 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15433 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15434 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15435
15436 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15437 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15438 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15439 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15440 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15441
15442       </div>
15443       <div class="tags">
15444
15445
15446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15447
15448
15449       </div>
15450     </div>
15451     <div class="padding"></div>
15452
15453     <div class="entry">
15454       <div class="title">
15455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15456       </div>
15457       <div class="date">
15458          4th February 2012
15459       </div>
15460       <div class="body">
15461         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15462 publish the third beta version of
15463 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15464 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15465 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15466 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15467 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15468 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15469 on the project announcement list.</p>
15470
15471 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15472 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15473
15474 <ul>
15475
15476 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15477   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15478   the installation.</li>
15479
15480 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15481   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15482
15483 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15484   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15485   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15486
15487 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15488   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15489   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15490   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15491   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15492   up to date on the system.</li>
15493
15494 </ul>
15495
15496 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15497 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15498 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15499 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15500
15501 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15502 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15503 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15504 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15505 will see you there?</p>
15506
15507       </div>
15508       <div class="tags">
15509
15510
15511         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15512
15513
15514       </div>
15515     </div>
15516     <div class="padding"></div>
15517
15518     <div class="entry">
15519       <div class="title">
15520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15521       </div>
15522       <div class="date">
15523         27th January 2012
15524       </div>
15525       <div class="body">
15526         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15527 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15528 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15529 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15530 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15531 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15532 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15533
15534 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15535 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15536 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15537 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15538 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15539 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15540 not taken care of by this.</p>
15541
15542 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15543 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15544 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15545 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15546 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15547 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15548 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15549 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15550 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15551 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15552 firmware packages.</p>
15553
15554 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15555 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15556 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15557 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15558 initrd with extra firmware, the
15559 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15560 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15561 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15562
15563 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15564 network cards working.  For this,
15565 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15566 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15567 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15568
15569 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15570 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15571 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15572
15573 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15574 try.</p>
15575
15576       </div>
15577       <div class="tags">
15578
15579
15580         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15581
15582
15583       </div>
15584     </div>
15585     <div class="padding"></div>
15586
15587     <div class="entry">
15588       <div class="title">
15589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15590       </div>
15591       <div class="date">
15592         25th January 2012
15593       </div>
15594       <div class="body">
15595         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15596 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15597 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15598 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15599 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15600
15601 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15602 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15603 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15604 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15605 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15606 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15607 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15608 will look similar to this:</p>
15609
15610 <p><blockquote><pre>
15611 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15612 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15613 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
15614
15615 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15616
15617 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15618 enter password: *******
15619 %
15620 </pre></blockquote></p>
15621
15622 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15623 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15624 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15625 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15626 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15627 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15628 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15629 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15630 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15631 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15632 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15633 automatically.</p>
15634
15635 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15636 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15637
15638 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15639 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15640 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15641
15642       </div>
15643       <div class="tags">
15644
15645
15646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15647
15648
15649       </div>
15650     </div>
15651     <div class="padding"></div>
15652
15653     <div class="entry">
15654       <div class="title">
15655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15656       </div>
15657       <div class="date">
15658         10th January 2012
15659       </div>
15660       <div class="body">
15661         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15662 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15663 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15664 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15665 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15666 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15667 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15668 first time.</p>
15669
15670 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15671 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15672 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15673 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15674
15675 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15676 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15677 new setting.</p>
15678
15679 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15680 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15681 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15682
15683       </div>
15684       <div class="tags">
15685
15686
15687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15688
15689
15690       </div>
15691     </div>
15692     <div class="padding"></div>
15693
15694     <div class="entry">
15695       <div class="title">
15696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15697       </div>
15698       <div class="date">
15699          7th January 2012
15700       </div>
15701       <div class="body">
15702         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15703 the second beta version of
15704 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15705 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15706 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15707 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15708 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15709 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15710 on the project announcement list.</p>
15711
15712       </div>
15713       <div class="tags">
15714
15715
15716         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15717
15718
15719       </div>
15720     </div>
15721     <div class="padding"></div>
15722
15723     <div class="entry">
15724       <div class="title">
15725         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
15726       </div>
15727       <div class="date">
15728          3rd January 2012
15729       </div>
15730       <div class="body">
15731         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15732 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15733 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15734 interesting.</p>
15735
15736 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15737 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15738 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15739 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15740 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15741 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15742 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15743
15744 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15745 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15746 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15747 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15748 because I was typing.</P>
15749
15750 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15751 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15752 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15753 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15754 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15755 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15756 generate entropy.</p>
15757
15758 <p>The fix is in
15759 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15760 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15761 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15762 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15763
15764       </div>
15765       <div class="tags">
15766
15767
15768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15769
15770
15771       </div>
15772     </div>
15773     <div class="padding"></div>
15774
15775     <div class="entry">
15776       <div class="title">
15777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15778       </div>
15779       <div class="date">
15780         21st November 2011
15781       </div>
15782       <div class="body">
15783         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15784 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15785 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15786 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15787 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15788 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15789 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15790 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15791 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15792 the tools to do so.</p>
15793
15794 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15795 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15796 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15797 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15798
15799 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15800 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15801 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15802 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15803 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15804 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15805 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15806 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15807
15808 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15809 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15810 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15811
15812 <p><pre>
15813 #!/usr/bin/perl
15814 use strict;
15815 use warnings;
15816 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15817 BEGIN {
15818     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15819     my %rhelmodules = (
15820         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15821         );
15822     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15823         eval "use $module;";
15824         if ($@) {
15825             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15826             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15827             eval "use $module;";
15828         }
15829     }
15830 }
15831 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15832
15833 upgrade_dell();
15834
15835 exit 0;
15836
15837 sub run_firmware_script {
15838     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15839     unless ($script) {
15840         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15841         exit 1
15842     }
15843     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15844
15845     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15846         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15847     } else {
15848         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15849     }
15850 }
15851
15852 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15853     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15854     # Run firmware packages
15855     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15856         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15857         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15858         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15859             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15860             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15861         }
15862         closedir $dh;
15863     }
15864 }
15865
15866 sub download {
15867     my $url = shift;
15868     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15869     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15870 }
15871
15872 sub upgrade_dell {
15873     my @dirs;
15874     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15875     chomp $product;
15876
15877     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15878
15879         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15880         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15881
15882         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15883             CLEANUP => 1
15884             );
15885         chdir($tmpdir);
15886         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15887         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15888         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15889         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15890         my $fwopts = "-q";
15891         if (@paths) {
15892             for my $url (@paths) {
15893                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15894             }
15895             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15896         } else {
15897             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15898             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15899         }
15900         chdir('/');
15901     } else {
15902         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15903         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15904     }
15905 }
15906
15907 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15908     my $path = shift;
15909     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15910     download($url);
15911 }
15912
15913 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15914 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15915 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15916 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15917     my $filename = shift;
15918
15919     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15920     chomp $product;
15921     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15922
15923     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15924
15925     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15926     my @paths;
15927     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15928         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15929         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15930         my $oscode;
15931         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15932             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15933         } else {
15934             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15935         }
15936         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15937         {
15938             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15939         }
15940     }
15941     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15942         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15943
15944         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15945         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15946
15947         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15948         for my $path (@paths) {
15949             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15950                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15951             }
15952         }
15953     }
15954     return @paths;
15955 }
15956 </pre>
15957
15958 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15959 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15960 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15961 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15962 outdated.</p>
15963
15964       </div>
15965       <div class="tags">
15966
15967
15968         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>.
15969
15970
15971       </div>
15972     </div>
15973     <div class="padding"></div>
15974
15975     <div class="entry">
15976       <div class="title">
15977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
15978       </div>
15979       <div class="date">
15980          7th October 2011
15981       </div>
15982       <div class="body">
15983         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
15984 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
15985 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
15986 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
15987 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
15988 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
15989 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
15990 models.</p>
15991
15992 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
15993 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
15994 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
15995 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
15996
15997 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
15998 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
15999 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
16000 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
16001 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
16002 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
16003 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
16004 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
16005 distributed.</p>
16006
16007 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
16008
16009 <ul>
16010
16011 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
16012   other relevant equipment.</li>
16013
16014 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
16015
16016 </ul>
16017
16018 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
16019 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
16020 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
16021 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
16022 books available.</p>
16023
16024 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
16025 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
16026 libraries. :)</p>
16027
16028       </div>
16029       <div class="tags">
16030
16031
16032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
16033
16034
16035       </div>
16036     </div>
16037     <div class="padding"></div>
16038
16039     <div class="entry">
16040       <div class="title">
16041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
16042       </div>
16043       <div class="date">
16044         17th September 2011
16045       </div>
16046       <div class="body">
16047         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16048 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16049 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16050 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16051 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16052 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16053 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16054 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16055
16056 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16057
16058 <blockquote><pre>
16059 #!/bin/sh
16060 # apt-get install lsdvd
16061 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16062 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16063 </pre></blockquote>
16064
16065 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16066 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16067 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16068 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16069
16070 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16071 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16072 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16073 back as an ISO.
16074
16075 <blockquote><pre>
16076 #!/bin/sh
16077 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16078 set -e
16079 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16080 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16081 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16082 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16083 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16084 </pre></blockquote>
16085
16086 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16087
16088 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16089 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16090 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16091 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16092 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16093
16094 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16095 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16096 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16097 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16098 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16099 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16100
16101       </div>
16102       <div class="tags">
16103
16104
16105         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16106
16107
16108       </div>
16109     </div>
16110     <div class="padding"></div>
16111
16112     <div class="entry">
16113       <div class="title">
16114         <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>
16115       </div>
16116       <div class="date">
16117          4th August 2011
16118       </div>
16119       <div class="body">
16120         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16121 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16122 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16124 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16125 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16126 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16127 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16128 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16129
16130 <p><blockquote>
16131 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16132 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16133 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16134 </blockquote></p>
16135
16136 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16137 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16138 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16139 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16140 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16141 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16142 hard to explain.</p>
16143
16144 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16145 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16146 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16147 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16148 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16149 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16150 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16151 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16152 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16153 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16154 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16155 mode).</p>
16156
16157 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16158 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16159 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16160 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16161 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16162 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16163 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16164 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16165 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16166
16167 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16168 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16169 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16170 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16171 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16172 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16173 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16174 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16175
16176 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16177 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16178 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16179
16180       </div>
16181       <div class="tags">
16182
16183
16184         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>.
16185
16186
16187       </div>
16188     </div>
16189     <div class="padding"></div>
16190
16191     <div class="entry">
16192       <div class="title">
16193         <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>
16194       </div>
16195       <div class="date">
16196         30th July 2011
16197       </div>
16198       <div class="body">
16199         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16200 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16201 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16202 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16203 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16204 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16205 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16206 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16207 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16208 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16209 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16210 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16211 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16212
16213 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16214 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16215 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16216 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16217 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16218 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16219 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16220 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16221 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16222
16223 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16224 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16225 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16226 is presented.</p>
16227
16228 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16229 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16230 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16231 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16232 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16233 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16234 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16235 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16236 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16237 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16238 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16239 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16240 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16241 find time to push this forward.</p>
16242
16243       </div>
16244       <div class="tags">
16245
16246
16247         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>.
16248
16249
16250       </div>
16251     </div>
16252     <div class="padding"></div>
16253
16254     <div class="entry">
16255       <div class="title">
16256         <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>
16257       </div>
16258       <div class="date">
16259         29th July 2011
16260       </div>
16261       <div class="body">
16262         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16263 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16264 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16265 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16266 issues.</p>
16267
16268 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16269 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16270 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16271
16272 <ol>
16273
16274 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16275 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16276 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16277 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16278 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16279 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16280 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16281 Debian.</li>
16282
16283 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16284 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16285 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16286 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16287 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16288 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16289 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16290 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16291 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16292 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16293 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16294 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16295 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16296
16297 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16298 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16299 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16300 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16301 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16302 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16303 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16304 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16305 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16306 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16307
16308 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16309 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16310 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16311 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16312 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16313 latter behaviour.</li>
16314
16315 </ol>
16316
16317 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16318 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16319 it do not matter much.</p>
16320
16321 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16322 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16323 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16324
16325       </div>
16326       <div class="tags">
16327
16328
16329         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/h264">h264</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>.
16330
16331
16332       </div>
16333     </div>
16334     <div class="padding"></div>
16335
16336     <div class="entry">
16337       <div class="title">
16338         <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>
16339       </div>
16340       <div class="date">
16341         26th July 2011
16342       </div>
16343       <div class="body">
16344         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16345 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16346 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16347 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16348 security support for a few years.</p>
16349
16350 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16351 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16352 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16353 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16354 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16355 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16356 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16357 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16358 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16359 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16360 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16361 easier in the future.</p>
16362
16363 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16364 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16365 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16366 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16367 do not have time for.</p>
16368
16369       </div>
16370       <div class="tags">
16371
16372
16373         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>.
16374
16375
16376       </div>
16377     </div>
16378     <div class="padding"></div>
16379
16380     <div class="entry">
16381       <div class="title">
16382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16383       </div>
16384       <div class="date">
16385         20th June 2011
16386       </div>
16387       <div class="body">
16388         <p>Reading
16389 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16390 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16391 parts of the
16392 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16393 and
16394 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16395 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16396 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16397 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16398
16399       </div>
16400       <div class="tags">
16401
16402
16403         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
16404
16405
16406       </div>
16407     </div>
16408     <div class="padding"></div>
16409
16410     <div class="entry">
16411       <div class="title">
16412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
16413       </div>
16414       <div class="date">
16415         30th April 2011
16416       </div>
16417       <div class="body">
16418         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16419 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16420 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16421 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16422 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16423 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16424 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16425 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16426 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16427 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16428
16429 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16430 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16431 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16432 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16433 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16434
16435       </div>
16436       <div class="tags">
16437
16438
16439         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
16440
16441
16442       </div>
16443     </div>
16444     <div class="padding"></div>
16445
16446     <div class="entry">
16447       <div class="title">
16448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
16449       </div>
16450       <div class="date">
16451         29th April 2011
16452       </div>
16453       <div class="body">
16454         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16455 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16456 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16457 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16458 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16459 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16460 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16461 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16462 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16463 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16464 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16465 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16466 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16467
16468 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16469 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16470 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16471 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16472 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16473 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16474 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16475 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16476 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16477 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16478 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16479 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16480 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16481
16482 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16483 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16484 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16485 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16486 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16487 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16488 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16489 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16490 it.</p>
16491
16492 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16493 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16494 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16495 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16496 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16497 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16498 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16499
16500 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16501 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16502 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16503 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16504 and range= options.</p>
16505
16506 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16507 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16508 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16509 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16510 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16511 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16512 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16513 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16514 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16515 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16516
16517 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16518 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16519 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16520 discussions instead of only
16521 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16522 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16523 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16524 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16525 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16526 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16527
16528       </div>
16529       <div class="tags">
16530
16531
16532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
16533
16534
16535       </div>
16536     </div>
16537     <div class="padding"></div>
16538
16539     <div class="entry">
16540       <div class="title">
16541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16542       </div>
16543       <div class="date">
16544          6th April 2011
16545       </div>
16546       <div class="body">
16547         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16548 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16549 A few days ago the project
16550 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16551 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16552 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16553 into Gnash.</p>
16554
16555       </div>
16556       <div class="tags">
16557
16558
16559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16560
16561
16562       </div>
16563     </div>
16564     <div class="padding"></div>
16565
16566     <div class="entry">
16567       <div class="title">
16568         <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>
16569       </div>
16570       <div class="date">
16571          3rd April 2011
16572       </div>
16573       <div class="body">
16574         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16575 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16576 update in English.</p>
16577
16578 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16579 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16580 of the British service
16581 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16582 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16583 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16584 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16585 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16586 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16587 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16588 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16589 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16590 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16591 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16592 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16593 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16594
16595 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16596 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16597 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16598 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16599 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16600 public infrastructure.</p>
16601
16602 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16603 such service?</p>
16604
16605       </div>
16606       <div class="tags">
16607
16608
16609         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>.
16610
16611
16612       </div>
16613     </div>
16614     <div class="padding"></div>
16615
16616     <div class="entry">
16617       <div class="title">
16618         <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>
16619       </div>
16620       <div class="date">
16621         28th January 2011
16622       </div>
16623       <div class="body">
16624         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16625 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16626 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16627 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16628 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16629 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16630 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16631 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16632 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16633 out which security holes were present in our free software
16634 collection.</p>
16635
16636 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16637 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16638 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16639 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16640 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16641 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16642 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16643 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16644 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16645 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16646 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16647 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16648 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16649 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16650 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16651 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16652
16653 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16654 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16655 check out, one could look up
16656 <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
16657 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16658 The most recent one is
16659 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16660 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16661 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16662
16663 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16664 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16665 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16666 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16667 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16668 security issues out.</p>
16669
16670 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16671 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16672 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16673 RHEL is providing
16674 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16675 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16676 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16677
16678 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16679 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16680 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16681 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16682 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16683 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16684 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16685 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16686 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16687 established soon.</p>
16688
16689 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16690 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16691 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16692 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16693 for their packages.</p>
16694
16695       </div>
16696       <div class="tags">
16697
16698
16699         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>.
16700
16701
16702       </div>
16703     </div>
16704     <div class="padding"></div>
16705
16706     <div class="entry">
16707       <div class="title">
16708         <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>
16709       </div>
16710       <div class="date">
16711         23rd January 2011
16712       </div>
16713       <div class="body">
16714         <p>In the
16715 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16716 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16717 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16718 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16719 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16720 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16721 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16722 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16723 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16724 one of my machines like this:</p>
16725
16726 <pre>
16727 loaded modules:
16728 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16729 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16730 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16731 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16732 10de:03ec pata_amd
16733 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16734 1022:1103 k8temp
16735 109e:036e bttv
16736 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16737 11ab:4364 sky2
16738 </pre>
16739
16740 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16741 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16742
16743 <pre>
16744 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16745     echo loaded pci modules:
16746     (
16747         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16748         for address in * ; do
16749             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16750                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16751                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16752                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16753                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16754                     echo "$id $module"
16755                 fi
16756             fi
16757         done
16758     )
16759     echo
16760 fi
16761 </pre>
16762
16763 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16764 mappings:</p>
16765
16766 <pre>
16767 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16768     echo loaded usb modules:
16769     (
16770         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16771         for address in * ; do
16772             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16773                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16774                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16775                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16776                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16777                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16778                         echo "$id $module"
16779                     fi
16780                 fi
16781             fi
16782         done
16783     )
16784     echo
16785 fi
16786 </pre>
16787
16788 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16789 well.</p>
16790
16791       </div>
16792       <div class="tags">
16793
16794
16795         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>.
16796
16797
16798       </div>
16799     </div>
16800     <div class="padding"></div>
16801
16802     <div class="entry">
16803       <div class="title">
16804         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
16805       </div>
16806       <div class="date">
16807         16th January 2011
16808       </div>
16809       <div class="body">
16810         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16811 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16812 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16813 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16814 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16815 the Wikipedia article on
16816 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16817 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16818 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16819 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16820 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16821 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16822 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16823 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16824 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16825 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16826 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16827 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16828
16829 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16830 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16831 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16832 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16833 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16834 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16835 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16836 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16837 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16838 from last week</a>.</p>
16839
16840 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16841 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16842 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16843 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16844 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16845 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16846 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16847
16848 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16849 available from
16850 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16851 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16852 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16853
16854 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16855 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16856 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16857 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16858
16859       </div>
16860       <div class="tags">
16861
16862
16863         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16864
16865
16866       </div>
16867     </div>
16868     <div class="padding"></div>
16869
16870     <div class="entry">
16871       <div class="title">
16872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
16873       </div>
16874       <div class="date">
16875         12th January 2011
16876       </div>
16877       <div class="body">
16878         <p>Today I discovered
16879 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16880 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16881 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16882 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16883 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16884 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16885 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16886 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16887 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16888 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16889 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16890 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16891 on the Google announcement is available from
16892 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16893 A good read. :)</p>
16894
16895 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16896 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16897 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16898 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16899 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16900 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16901 browsers support H.264, and others support
16902 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16903 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16904 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16905 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16906 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16907 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16908 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16909 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16910
16911 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16912 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16913 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16914 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16915 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16916 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16917 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16918
16919 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16920 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16921 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16922 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16923 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16924 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16925 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16926
16927 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16928 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16929 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16930 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16931 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16932 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16933 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16934
16935 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16936 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16937 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16938 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16939 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16940 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16941 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16942 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16943 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16944 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16945 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16946 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16947 I guess time will tell.</p>
16948
16949 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16950 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16951 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16952
16953       </div>
16954       <div class="tags">
16955
16956
16957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16958
16959
16960       </div>
16961     </div>
16962     <div class="padding"></div>
16963
16964     <div class="entry">
16965       <div class="title">
16966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
16967       </div>
16968       <div class="date">
16969         30th December 2010
16970       </div>
16971       <div class="body">
16972         <p>After trying to
16973 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
16974 Ogg Theora</a> to
16975 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
16976 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
16977 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
16978 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
16979 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
16980 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
16981 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
16982
16983 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
16984 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
16985 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
16986 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
16987 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
16988 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
16989 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
16990
16991 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
16992 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
16993
16994       </div>
16995       <div class="tags">
16996
16997
16998         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16999
17000
17001       </div>
17002     </div>
17003     <div class="padding"></div>
17004
17005     <div class="entry">
17006       <div class="title">
17007         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
17008       </div>
17009       <div class="date">
17010         27th December 2010
17011       </div>
17012       <div class="body">
17013         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
17014 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
17015 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
17016 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
17017 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
17018 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
17019 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
17020 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
17021
17022 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
17023 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
17024 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
17025 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
17026 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
17027 page</a>.</p>
17028
17029 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
17030 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
17031 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
17032 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
17033 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
17034 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
17035 specification on equal terms.</p>
17036
17037 <blockquote>
17038
17039 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
17040 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
17041 open standard:</p>
17042
17043 <ul>
17044
17045 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17046 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17047 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17048 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17049
17050 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17051 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17052 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17053 nominal fee.</li>
17054
17055 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17056 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17057 free basis.</li>
17058
17059 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17060
17061 </ul>
17062 </blockquote>
17063
17064 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17065 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17066 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17067 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17068 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17069 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17070 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17071
17072 <blockquote>
17073
17074 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17075
17076 <ol>
17077
17078 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17079 tilgængelig.</li>
17080
17081 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17082 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17083
17084 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17085 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17086
17087 </ol>
17088
17089 </blockquote>
17090
17091 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17092 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17093
17094 <blockquote>
17095
17096 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17097
17098 <ol>
17099
17100 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17101 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17102
17103 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17104 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17105 Standard themselves;</li>
17106
17107 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17108 any party or in any business model;</li>
17109
17110 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17111 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17112 parties;</li>
17113
17114 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17115 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17116 parties.</li>
17117
17118 </ol>
17119
17120 </blockquote>
17121
17122 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17123 its
17124 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17125 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17126
17127 <blockquote>
17128 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17129
17130 <ul>
17131
17132 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17133   democratic:
17134
17135          <ul>
17136
17137          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17138             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17139             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17140             and managed.</li>
17141
17142          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17143             method, can be changed through input from all
17144             participants.</li>
17145
17146          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17147             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17148
17149          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17150             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17151
17152          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17153             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17154             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17155
17156          </ul>
17157
17158 </li>
17159
17160 </ul>
17161
17162 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17163 <ul>
17164
17165 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17166   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17167   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17168   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17169   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17170
17171 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17172   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17173
17174 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17175   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17176   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17177   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17178   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17179   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17180   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17181   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17182   intended to function.</li>
17183
17184 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17185   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17186   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17187
17188 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17189   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17190   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17191   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17192   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17193   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17194   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17195   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17196
17197       <ul>
17198
17199       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17200         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17201         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17202
17203       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17204         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17205         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17206         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17207
17208       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17209         licensor</li>
17210
17211       </ul>
17212 </li>
17213
17214 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17215   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17216   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17217
17218 </ul>
17219
17220 </blockquote>
17221
17222 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17223 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17224 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17225 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17226 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17227 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17228 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17229 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17230 Standards.</p>
17231
17232       </div>
17233       <div class="tags">
17234
17235
17236         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17237
17238
17239       </div>
17240     </div>
17241     <div class="padding"></div>
17242
17243     <div class="entry">
17244       <div class="title">
17245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
17246       </div>
17247       <div class="date">
17248         25th December 2010
17249       </div>
17250       <div class="body">
17251         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17252 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17253
17254 <blockquote>
17255
17256 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17257 as follows:</p>
17258
17259 <ol>
17260
17261 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17262 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17263 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17264
17265 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17266 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17267 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17268 parties.</li>
17269
17270 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17271 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17272 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17273
17274 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17275 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17276
17277 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17278
17279 </ol>
17280
17281 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17282 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17283 products based on the standard.</p>
17284 </blockquote>
17285
17286 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17287 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17288 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17289 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17290 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17291 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17292 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17293 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17294
17295 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17296
17297 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17298 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17299 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17300 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17301 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17302 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17303 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17304 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17305 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17306 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17307 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17308 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17309 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17310 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17311
17312 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17313
17314 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17315 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17316 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17317 documentation indicating this.</p>
17318
17319 <p>According to
17320 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17321 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17322 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17323 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17324 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17325 report is correct.</p>
17326
17327 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17328
17329 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17330 container format</a> and both the
17331 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17332 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17333 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17334
17335 <blockquote>
17336
17337 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17338 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17339 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17340 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17341 specification compliance.
17342
17343 </blockquote>
17344
17345 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17346 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17347 this is the term:<p>
17348
17349 <blockquote>
17350
17351 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17352 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17353 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17354 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17355 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17356 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17357 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17358 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17359 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17360 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17361 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17362 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17363
17364 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17365 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17366 </blockquote>
17367
17368 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17369 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17370 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17371 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17372 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17373
17374 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17375
17376 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17377 Theora format.
17378 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17379 and
17380 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17381 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17382 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17383 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17384 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17385 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17386 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17387 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17388
17389 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17390
17391 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17392
17393 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17394
17395 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17396 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17397 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17398 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17399 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17400 this.</p>
17401
17402 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17403 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17404
17405       </div>
17406       <div class="tags">
17407
17408
17409         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17410
17411
17412       </div>
17413     </div>
17414     <div class="padding"></div>
17415
17416     <div class="entry">
17417       <div class="title">
17418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
17419       </div>
17420       <div class="date">
17421         25th December 2010
17422       </div>
17423       <div class="body">
17424         <p>A few days ago
17425 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17426 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17427 2.0 of
17428 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17429 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17430 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17431 Nothing very surprising there, given
17432 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17433 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17434 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17435 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17436 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17437 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17438 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17439 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17440 standard definition from its content.</p>
17441
17442 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17443 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17444 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17445 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17446 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17447 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17448 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17449 background information about that story is available in
17450 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17451 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17452
17453 <blockquote>
17454 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17455 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17456 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17457
17458 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17459
17460 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
17461
17462 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
17463
17464 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
17465
17466 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
17467
17468 <p>
17469 <ul>
17470 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17471 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17472 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17473 </ul>
17474 </p>
17475
17476 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
17477
17478 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
17479
17480 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
17481
17482 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
17483
17484 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
17485
17486
17487 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17488 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17489 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17490 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17491 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17492 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17493
17494 </p>
17495
17496 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
17497
17498 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
17499
17500 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17501
17502 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
17503
17504 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
17505
17506 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
17507
17508 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
17509
17510 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
17511
17512 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
17513
17514 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
17515
17516 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
17517
17518 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
17519
17520 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
17521
17522 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
17523
17524 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
17525
17526 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
17527
17528 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
17529
17530 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
17531
17532 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
17533
17534 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
17535
17536 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
17537
17538 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
17539
17540 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
17541
17542 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
17543
17544 <p>On security:</p>
17545
17546 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
17547
17548 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
17549
17550 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
17551
17552 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17553
17554 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
17555
17556 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17557
17558 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
17559
17560 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
17561
17562 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
17563
17564 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
17565
17566 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
17567
17568 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
17569
17570 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
17571
17572 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
17573
17574 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
17575
17576 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
17577
17578 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
17579
17580 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
17581
17582 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
17583
17584 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
17585
17586 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
17587
17588 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
17589
17590 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
17591
17592 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
17593
17594 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
17595
17596 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
17597
17598 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
17599
17600 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
17601
17602 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
17603
17604 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
17605
17606 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
17607
17608 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
17609
17610 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
17611
17612 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
17613
17614 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
17615
17616 <p>Cordially,<br>
17617 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17618 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17619 </blockquote>
17620
17621       </div>
17622       <div class="tags">
17623
17624
17625         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17626
17627
17628       </div>
17629     </div>
17630     <div class="padding"></div>
17631
17632     <div class="entry">
17633       <div class="title">
17634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17635       </div>
17636       <div class="date">
17637         25th December 2010
17638       </div>
17639       <div class="body">
17640         <p>Half a year ago I
17641 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17642 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17643 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17644 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17645
17646 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17647 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17648 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17649 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17650 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17651 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17652 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17653
17654       </div>
17655       <div class="tags">
17656
17657
17658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17659
17660
17661       </div>
17662     </div>
17663     <div class="padding"></div>
17664
17665     <div class="entry">
17666       <div class="title">
17667         <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>
17668       </div>
17669       <div class="date">
17670         22nd December 2010
17671       </div>
17672       <div class="body">
17673         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17674 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17675 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17676 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17677 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17678 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17679 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17680 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17681 university.</p>
17682
17683 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17684 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17685 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17686 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17687 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17688 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17689 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17690 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17691
17692 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17693 I perform on a new model.</p>
17694
17695 <ul>
17696
17697 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17698 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17699 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17700
17701 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17702 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17703
17704 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17705 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17706 reported by the program.</li>
17707
17708 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17709 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17710 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17711 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17712 normally test this by playing
17713 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17714 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17715
17716 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17717 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17718
17719 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17720 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17721
17722 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17723 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17724
17725 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17726 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17727 few.</li>
17728
17729 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17730 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17731 notice this.</li>
17732
17733 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17734 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17735 resume.</li>
17736
17737 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17738 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17739 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17740 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17741 not.</li>
17742
17743 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17744 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17745 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17746 existence.</li>
17747
17748 </ul>
17749
17750 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17751 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17752 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17753 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17754 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17755 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17756 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17757 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17758
17759       </div>
17760       <div class="tags">
17761
17762
17763         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>.
17764
17765
17766       </div>
17767     </div>
17768     <div class="padding"></div>
17769
17770     <div class="entry">
17771       <div class="title">
17772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17773       </div>
17774       <div class="date">
17775         11th December 2010
17776       </div>
17777       <div class="body">
17778         <p>As I continue to explore
17779 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17780 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17781 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17782
17783 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17784 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17785 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17786 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17787 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17788 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17789 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17790 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17791 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17792 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17793 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17794 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17795 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17796 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17797 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17798 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17799 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17800 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17801 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17802 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17803
17804 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17805 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17806 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17807 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17808 If the Skolelinux foundation
17809 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17810 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17811 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17812 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17813 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17814 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17815 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17816 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17817
17818 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17819 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17820 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17821 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17822 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17823 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17824 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17825 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17826 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17827 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17828 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17829 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17830 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17831 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17832 currencies.</p>
17833
17834 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17835 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17836 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17837 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17838 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17839 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17840 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17841 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17842 BitCoins.  Check out
17843 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17844 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17845 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17846 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17847 yet.</p>
17848
17849 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17850 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17851 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17852 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17853 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17854
17855       </div>
17856       <div class="tags">
17857
17858
17859         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>.
17860
17861
17862       </div>
17863     </div>
17864     <div class="padding"></div>
17865
17866     <div class="entry">
17867       <div class="title">
17868         <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>
17869       </div>
17870       <div class="date">
17871         10th December 2010
17872       </div>
17873       <div class="body">
17874         <p>With this weeks lawless
17875 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17876 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17877 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17878 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17879 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17880 A blog post from
17881 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17882 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17883 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17884 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17885 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17886 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17887 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17888
17889 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17890 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17891 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17892 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17893 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17894 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17895 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17896 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17897 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17898 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17899
17900 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17901 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17902 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17903 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17904 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17905 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17906 you can even get
17907 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17908 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17909 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17910 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17911
17912 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17913 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17914 donations to the address
17915 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17916
17917       </div>
17918       <div class="tags">
17919
17920
17921         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>.
17922
17923
17924       </div>
17925     </div>
17926     <div class="padding"></div>
17927
17928     <div class="entry">
17929       <div class="title">
17930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
17931       </div>
17932       <div class="date">
17933          9th December 2010
17934       </div>
17935       <div class="body">
17936         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17937 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17938 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17939 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17940 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17941 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17942 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17943 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17944 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17945 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17946 operational.</p>
17947
17948 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17949 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17950 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17951 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17952 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17953 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17954 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17955
17956       </div>
17957       <div class="tags">
17958
17959
17960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
17961
17962
17963       </div>
17964     </div>
17965     <div class="padding"></div>
17966
17967     <div class="entry">
17968       <div class="title">
17969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
17970       </div>
17971       <div class="date">
17972         29th November 2010
17973       </div>
17974       <div class="body">
17975         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
17976 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
17977 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
17978 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
17979 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
17980 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17981
17982 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
17983 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
17984 will hold its
17985 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
17986 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
17987 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
17988 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
17989 vote this year.</p>
17990
17991       </div>
17992       <div class="tags">
17993
17994
17995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17996
17997
17998       </div>
17999     </div>
18000     <div class="padding"></div>
18001
18002     <div class="entry">
18003       <div class="title">
18004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
18005       </div>
18006       <div class="date">
18007         27th November 2010
18008       </div>
18009       <div class="body">
18010         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
18011 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
18012 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
18013 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
18014 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
18015 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
18016 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
18017 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
18018
18019 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
18020 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18021 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
18022 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
18023 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
18024 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
18025 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
18026 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
18027 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
18028 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
18029 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
18030
18031 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
18032 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
18033 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
18034 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
18035 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
18036 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
18037 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
18038 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
18039 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
18040 what is going on.</p>
18041
18042       </div>
18043       <div class="tags">
18044
18045
18046         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>.
18047
18048
18049       </div>
18050     </div>
18051     <div class="padding"></div>
18052
18053     <div class="entry">
18054       <div class="title">
18055         <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>
18056       </div>
18057       <div class="date">
18058         22nd November 2010
18059       </div>
18060       <div class="body">
18061         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18062 upgrade testing of the
18063 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18064 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18065 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18066 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18067
18068 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18069
18070 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18071
18072 <blockquote><p>
18073   apache2.2-bin
18074   aptdaemon
18075   baobab
18076   binfmt-support
18077   browser-plugin-gnash
18078   cheese-common
18079   cli-common
18080   cups-pk-helper
18081   dmz-cursor-theme
18082   empathy
18083   empathy-common
18084   freedesktop-sound-theme
18085   freeglut3
18086   gconf-defaults-service
18087   gdm-themes
18088   gedit-plugins
18089   geoclue
18090   geoclue-hostip
18091   geoclue-localnet
18092   geoclue-manual
18093   geoclue-yahoo
18094   gnash
18095   gnash-common
18096   gnome
18097   gnome-backgrounds
18098   gnome-cards-data
18099   gnome-codec-install
18100   gnome-core
18101   gnome-desktop-environment
18102   gnome-disk-utility
18103   gnome-screenshot
18104   gnome-search-tool
18105   gnome-session-canberra
18106   gnome-system-log
18107   gnome-themes-extras
18108   gnome-themes-more
18109   gnome-user-share
18110   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18111   gstreamer0.10-tools
18112   gtk2-engines
18113   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18114   gtk2-engines-smooth
18115   hamster-applet
18116   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18117   libapr1
18118   libaprutil1
18119   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18120   libaprutil1-ldap
18121   libart2.0-cil
18122   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18123   libboost-python1.42.0
18124   libboost-thread1.42.0
18125   libchamplain-0.4-0
18126   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18127   libcheese-gtk18
18128   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18129   libcryptui0
18130   libdiscid0
18131   libelf1
18132   libepc-1.0-2
18133   libepc-common
18134   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18135   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18136   libfreerdp0
18137   libgconf2.0-cil
18138   libgdata-common
18139   libgdata7
18140   libgdu-gtk0
18141   libgee2
18142   libgeoclue0
18143   libgexiv2-0
18144   libgif4
18145   libglade2.0-cil
18146   libglib2.0-cil
18147   libgmime2.4-cil
18148   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18149   libgnome2.24-cil
18150   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18151   libgpod-common
18152   libgpod4
18153   libgtk2.0-cil
18154   libgtkglext1
18155   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18156   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18157   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18158   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18159   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18160   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18161   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18162   libmono-security2.0-cil
18163   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18164   libmono-system2.0-cil
18165   libmtp8
18166   libmusicbrainz3-6
18167   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18168   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18169   libopal3.6.8
18170   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18171   libpt2.6.7
18172   libpython2.6
18173   librpm1
18174   librpmio1
18175   libsdl1.2debian
18176   libsrtp0
18177   libssh-4
18178   libtelepathy-farsight0
18179   libtelepathy-glib0
18180   libtidy-0.99-0
18181   media-player-info
18182   mesa-utils
18183   mono-2.0-gac
18184   mono-gac
18185   mono-runtime
18186   nautilus-sendto
18187   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18188   p7zip-full
18189   pkg-config
18190   python-aptdaemon
18191   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18192   python-axiom
18193   python-beautifulsoup
18194   python-bugbuddy
18195   python-clientform
18196   python-coherence
18197   python-configobj
18198   python-crypto
18199   python-cupshelpers
18200   python-elementtree
18201   python-epsilon
18202   python-evolution
18203   python-feedparser
18204   python-gdata
18205   python-gdbm
18206   python-gst0.10
18207   python-gtkglext1
18208   python-gtksourceview2
18209   python-httplib2
18210   python-louie
18211   python-mako
18212   python-markupsafe
18213   python-mechanize
18214   python-nevow
18215   python-notify
18216   python-opengl
18217   python-openssl
18218   python-pam
18219   python-pkg-resources
18220   python-pyasn1
18221   python-pysqlite2
18222   python-rdflib
18223   python-serial
18224   python-tagpy
18225   python-twisted-bin
18226   python-twisted-conch
18227   python-twisted-core
18228   python-twisted-web
18229   python-utidylib
18230   python-webkit
18231   python-xdg
18232   python-zope.interface
18233   remmina
18234   remmina-plugin-data
18235   remmina-plugin-rdp
18236   remmina-plugin-vnc
18237   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18238   rhythmbox-plugins
18239   rpm-common
18240   rpm2cpio
18241   seahorse-plugins
18242   shotwell
18243   software-center
18244   system-config-printer-udev
18245   telepathy-gabble
18246   telepathy-mission-control-5
18247   telepathy-salut
18248   tomboy
18249   totem
18250   totem-coherence
18251   totem-mozilla
18252   totem-plugins
18253   transmission-common
18254   xdg-user-dirs
18255   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18256   xserver-xephyr
18257 </p></blockquote>
18258
18259 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18260
18261 <blockquote><p>
18262   cheese
18263   ekiga
18264   eog
18265   epiphany-extensions
18266   evolution-exchange
18267   fast-user-switch-applet
18268   file-roller
18269   gcalctool
18270   gconf-editor
18271   gdm
18272   gedit
18273   gedit-common
18274   gnome-games
18275   gnome-games-data
18276   gnome-nettool
18277   gnome-system-tools
18278   gnome-themes
18279   gnuchess
18280   gucharmap
18281   guile-1.8-libs
18282   libavahi-ui0
18283   libdmx1
18284   libgalago3
18285   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18286   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18287   liblircclient0
18288   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18289   libspeexdsp1
18290   libsvga1
18291   rhythmbox
18292   seahorse
18293   sound-juicer
18294   system-config-printer
18295   totem-common
18296   transmission-gtk
18297   vinagre
18298   vino
18299 </p></blockquote>
18300
18301 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18302
18303 <blockquote><p>
18304   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18305 </p></blockquote>
18306
18307 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18308
18309 <blockquote><p>
18310 [nothing]
18311 </p></blockquote>
18312
18313 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18314
18315 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18316
18317 <blockquote><p>
18318   ksmserver
18319 </p></blockquote>
18320
18321 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18322
18323 <blockquote><p>
18324   kwin
18325   network-manager-kde
18326 </p></blockquote>
18327
18328 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18329
18330 <blockquote><p>
18331   arts
18332   dolphin
18333   freespacenotifier
18334   google-gadgets-gst
18335   google-gadgets-xul
18336   kappfinder
18337   kcalc
18338   kcharselect
18339   kde-core
18340   kde-plasma-desktop
18341   kde-standard
18342   kde-window-manager
18343   kdeartwork
18344   kdeartwork-emoticons
18345   kdeartwork-style
18346   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18347   kdebase
18348   kdebase-apps
18349   kdebase-workspace
18350   kdebase-workspace-bin
18351   kdebase-workspace-data
18352   kdeeject
18353   kdelibs
18354   kdeplasma-addons
18355   kdeutils
18356   kdewallpapers
18357   kdf
18358   kfloppy
18359   kgpg
18360   khelpcenter4
18361   kinfocenter
18362   konq-plugins-l10n
18363   konqueror-nsplugins
18364   kscreensaver
18365   kscreensaver-xsavers
18366   ktimer
18367   kwrite
18368   libgle3
18369   libkde4-ruby1.8
18370   libkonq5
18371   libkonq5-templates
18372   libnetpbm10
18373   libplasma-ruby
18374   libplasma-ruby1.8
18375   libqt4-ruby1.8
18376   marble-data
18377   marble-plugins
18378   netpbm
18379   nuvola-icon-theme
18380   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18381   plasma-desktop
18382   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18383   plasma-runners-addons
18384   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18385   plasma-scriptengine-python
18386   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18387   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18388   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18389   plasma-scriptengines
18390   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18391   plasma-widget-folderview
18392   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18393   ruby
18394   sweeper
18395   update-notifier-kde
18396   xscreensaver-data-extra
18397   xscreensaver-gl
18398   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18399   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18400 </p></blockquote>
18401
18402 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18403
18404 <blockquote><p>
18405   ark
18406   google-gadgets-common
18407   google-gadgets-qt
18408   htdig
18409   kate
18410   kdebase-bin
18411   kdebase-data
18412   kdepasswd
18413   kfind
18414   klipper
18415   konq-plugins
18416   konqueror
18417   ksysguard
18418   ksysguardd
18419   libarchive1
18420   libcln6
18421   libeet1
18422   libeina-svn-06
18423   libggadget-1.0-0b
18424   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18425   libgps19
18426   libkdecorations4
18427   libkephal4
18428   libkonq4
18429   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18430   libkscreensaver5
18431   libksgrd4
18432   libksignalplotter4
18433   libkunitconversion4
18434   libkwineffects1a
18435   libmarblewidget4
18436   libntrack-qt4-1
18437   libntrack0
18438   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18439   libplasmaclock4a
18440   libplasmagenericshell4
18441   libprocesscore4a
18442   libprocessui4a
18443   libqalculate5
18444   libqedje0a
18445   libqtruby4shared2
18446   libqzion0a
18447   libruby1.8
18448   libscim8c2a
18449   libsmokekdecore4-3
18450   libsmokekdeui4-3
18451   libsmokekfile3
18452   libsmokekhtml3
18453   libsmokekio3
18454   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18455   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18456   libsmokekparts3
18457   libsmokektexteditor3
18458   libsmokekutils3
18459   libsmokenepomuk3
18460   libsmokephonon3
18461   libsmokeplasma3
18462   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18463   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18464   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18465   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18466   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18467   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18468   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18469   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18470   libsmokeqttest4-3
18471   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18472   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18473   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18474   libsmokesolid3
18475   libsmokesoprano3
18476   libtaskmanager4a
18477   libtidy-0.99-0
18478   libweather-ion4a
18479   libxklavier16
18480   libxxf86misc1
18481   okteta
18482   oxygencursors
18483   plasma-dataengines-addons
18484   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18485   plasma-widget-lancelot
18486   plasma-widgets-addons
18487   plasma-widgets-workspace
18488   polkit-kde-1
18489   ruby1.8
18490   systemsettings
18491   update-notifier-common
18492 </p></blockquote>
18493
18494 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18495 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18496 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18497 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18498
18499       </div>
18500       <div class="tags">
18501
18502
18503         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>.
18504
18505
18506       </div>
18507     </div>
18508     <div class="padding"></div>
18509
18510     <div class="entry">
18511       <div class="title">
18512         <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>
18513       </div>
18514       <div class="date">
18515         22nd November 2010
18516       </div>
18517       <div class="body">
18518         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18519 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18520 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18521 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18522 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18523 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18524 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18525 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18526 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18527
18528 <p>I found
18529 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18530 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18531 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18532 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18533 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18534 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18535
18536 <pre>
18537 #!/bin/sh
18538
18539 # Based on
18540 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18541
18542 set -e
18543 set -x
18544
18545 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18546     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18547     exit 1
18548 else
18549     host="$1"
18550 fi
18551
18552 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18553     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18554     exit 1
18555 fi
18556
18557 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18558 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18559 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18560 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18561
18562 img=$host.img
18563 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18564 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18565
18566 parted $img mklabel msdos
18567 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18568 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18569 parted $img set 1 boot on
18570
18571 modprobe dm-mod
18572 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18573 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18574
18575 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18576 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18577 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18578
18579 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18580 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18581 </pre>
18582
18583 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18584 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18585
18586 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18587 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18588 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18589 seem to work just fine.</p>
18590
18591       </div>
18592       <div class="tags">
18593
18594
18595         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>.
18596
18597
18598       </div>
18599     </div>
18600     <div class="padding"></div>
18601
18602     <div class="entry">
18603       <div class="title">
18604         <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>
18605       </div>
18606       <div class="date">
18607         20th November 2010
18608       </div>
18609       <div class="body">
18610         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18611 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18612 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18613 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18614
18615 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18616 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18617 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18618
18619 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18620
18621 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18622
18623 <blockquote><p>
18624   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18625   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18626   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18627   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18628   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18629   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18630   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18631   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18632   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18633   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18634   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18635   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18636   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18637   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18638   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18639   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18640   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18641   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18642   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18643   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18644   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18645   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18646   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18647   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18648   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18649   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18650   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18651   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18652   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18653   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18654   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18655   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18656   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18657   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18658   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18659   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18660   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18661   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18662   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18663   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18664   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18665   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18666   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18667   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18668   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18669   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18670   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18671   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18672   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18673   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18674   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18675   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18676   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18677   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18678   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18679   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18680   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18681   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18682   zip
18683 </p></blockquote>
18684
18685 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18686
18687 <blockquote><p>
18688   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18689   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18690   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18691   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18692   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18693   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18694   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18695   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18696   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18697   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18698   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18699   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18700   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18701   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18702   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18703   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18704   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18705   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18706   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18707   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18708   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18709   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18710   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18711   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18712   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18713   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18714   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18715   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18716   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18717 </p></blockquote>
18718
18719 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18720
18721 <blockquote><p>
18722   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18723 </p></blockquote>
18724
18725 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18726
18727 <blockquote><p>
18728 [nothing]
18729 </p></blockquote>
18730
18731 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18732
18733 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18734
18735 <blockquote><p>
18736   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18737   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18738   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18739   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18740   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18741   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18742   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18743   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18744   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18745   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18746   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18747   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18748   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18749   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18750   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18751   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18752   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18753   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18754   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18755   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18756   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18757   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18758   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18759   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18760   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18761   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18762   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18763   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18764   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18765   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18766 </p></blockquote>
18767
18768 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18769
18770 <blockquote><p>
18771   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18772   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18773   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18774   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18775   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18776   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18777   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18778   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18779   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18780   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18781   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18782   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18783   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18784   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18785   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18786   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18787   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18788   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18789   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18790   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18791   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18792   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18793   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18794   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18795   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18796   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18797   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18798   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18799   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18800   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18801   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18802   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18803   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18804 </p></blockquote>
18805
18806 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18807
18808 <blockquote><p>
18809   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18810   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18811   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18812   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18813   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18814   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18815   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18816 </p></blockquote>
18817
18818 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18819
18820 <blockquote><p>
18821   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18822 </p></blockquote>
18823
18824       </div>
18825       <div class="tags">
18826
18827
18828         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>.
18829
18830
18831       </div>
18832     </div>
18833     <div class="padding"></div>
18834
18835     <div class="entry">
18836       <div class="title">
18837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18838       </div>
18839       <div class="date">
18840         20th November 2010
18841       </div>
18842       <div class="body">
18843         <p>Answering
18844 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18845 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18846 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18847 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18848 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18849 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18850 releases out more often.</p>
18851
18852 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18853 I have considered setting up a <a
18854 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18855 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18856 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18857 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18858 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18859 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18860 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18861 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18862 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18863 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18864 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18865 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18866
18867       </div>
18868       <div class="tags">
18869
18870
18871         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>.
18872
18873
18874       </div>
18875     </div>
18876     <div class="padding"></div>
18877
18878     <div class="entry">
18879       <div class="title">
18880         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18881       </div>
18882       <div class="date">
18883          9th November 2010
18884       </div>
18885       <div class="body">
18886         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18887
18888 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18889 3D linked in from
18890 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18891 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18892
18893       </div>
18894       <div class="tags">
18895
18896
18897         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>.
18898
18899
18900       </div>
18901     </div>
18902     <div class="padding"></div>
18903
18904     <div class="entry">
18905       <div class="title">
18906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
18907       </div>
18908       <div class="date">
18909          7th November 2010
18910       </div>
18911       <div class="body">
18912         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18913 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18914 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18915 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18916 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18917 working using this DVD.</p>
18918
18919 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18920 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18921 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18922 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18923 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18924 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18925 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18926
18927 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18928 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18929 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18930 Debian archive.</p>
18931
18932 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18933 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18934 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18935 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18936 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18937 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18938 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18939 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18940 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18941 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18942 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18943 free X driver should work.</p>
18944
18945 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18946 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18947 DVD more useful again.</p>
18948
18949       </div>
18950       <div class="tags">
18951
18952
18953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18954
18955
18956       </div>
18957     </div>
18958     <div class="padding"></div>
18959
18960     <div class="entry">
18961       <div class="title">
18962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
18963       </div>
18964       <div class="date">
18965         24th October 2010
18966       </div>
18967       <div class="body">
18968         <p>Some updates.</p>
18969
18970 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
18971 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
18972 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
18973 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
18974 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
18975 :)</p>
18976
18977 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
18978 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
18979 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
18980 It is called
18981 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
18982 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
18983 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
18984 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
18985 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
18986 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
18987
18988 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
18989 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
18990 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
18991 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
18992 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
18993 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
18994 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
18995 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
18996 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
18997 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
18998
18999       </div>
19000       <div class="tags">
19001
19002
19003         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>.
19004
19005
19006       </div>
19007     </div>
19008     <div class="padding"></div>
19009
19010     <div class="entry">
19011       <div class="title">
19012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
19013       </div>
19014       <div class="date">
19015         19th October 2010
19016       </div>
19017       <div class="body">
19018         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
19019 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
19020 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
19021 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
19022 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
19023 AVM2 flash files.</p>
19024
19025 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
19026 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
19027 following text:</P>
19028
19029 <p><blockquote>
19030
19031   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
19032   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
19033
19034   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
19035
19036   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
19037
19038   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
19039   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
19040   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
19041   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
19042   days. The project web page is available from
19043   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
19044   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
19045   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
19046
19047   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19048   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19049   to get this to happen.</p>
19050
19051   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19052   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19053
19054 </blockquote></p>
19055
19056 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19057 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19058 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19059 :)</p>
19060
19061       </div>
19062       <div class="tags">
19063
19064
19065         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19066
19067
19068       </div>
19069     </div>
19070     <div class="padding"></div>
19071
19072     <div class="entry">
19073       <div class="title">
19074         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
19075       </div>
19076       <div class="date">
19077          9th October 2010
19078       </div>
19079       <div class="body">
19080         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19081 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19082 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19083 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19084 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19085 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19086 robots.</p>
19087
19088 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19089 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19090 a few less important features too.</p>
19091
19092 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19093 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19094 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19095 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19096
19097 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19098 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19099 source or binary package:</p>
19100
19101 <p><ul>
19102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
19103 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
19104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
19105 </ul></p>
19106
19107 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19108 please let me know.</p>
19109
19110       </div>
19111       <div class="tags">
19112
19113
19114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
19115
19116
19117       </div>
19118     </div>
19119     <div class="padding"></div>
19120
19121     <div class="entry">
19122       <div class="title">
19123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19124       </div>
19125       <div class="date">
19126          3rd October 2010
19127       </div>
19128       <div class="body">
19129         <p><ul>
19130
19131 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
19132 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19133
19134 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19135 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19136 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19137
19138 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19139 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19140 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19141 simple setup.
19142
19143 </ul></p>
19144
19145       </div>
19146       <div class="tags">
19147
19148
19149         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19150
19151
19152       </div>
19153     </div>
19154     <div class="padding"></div>
19155
19156     <div class="entry">
19157       <div class="title">
19158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
19159       </div>
19160       <div class="date">
19161          9th September 2010
19162       </div>
19163       <div class="body">
19164         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19165 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19166 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19167 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19168 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19169 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19170 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19171 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19172 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19173
19174 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19175 written:</p>
19176
19177 <blockquote>
19178 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19179 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19180 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19181 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19182 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19183
19184 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19185 standard.</p>
19186 </blockquote>
19187
19188 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19189 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19190 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19191 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19192
19193 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19194 read
19195 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19196 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19197 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19198 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19199 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19200 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19201 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19202 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19203 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19204
19205       </div>
19206       <div class="tags">
19207
19208
19209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19210
19211
19212       </div>
19213     </div>
19214     <div class="padding"></div>
19215
19216     <div class="entry">
19217       <div class="title">
19218         <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>
19219       </div>
19220       <div class="date">
19221          4th September 2010
19222       </div>
19223       <div class="body">
19224         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19225 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19226 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19227 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19228 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19229 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19230 installed.</p>
19231
19232 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19233 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19234 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19235 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19236 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19237 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19238 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19239 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19240 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19241
19242 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19243 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19244 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19245 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19246 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19247 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19248 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19249 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19250 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19251 pages they want to visit.</p>
19252
19253 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19254 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19255 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19256 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19257 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19258 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19259 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19260 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19261 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19262 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19263 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19264
19265       </div>
19266       <div class="tags">
19267
19268
19269         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>.
19270
19271
19272       </div>
19273     </div>
19274     <div class="padding"></div>
19275
19276     <div class="entry">
19277       <div class="title">
19278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
19279       </div>
19280       <div class="date">
19281          1st September 2010
19282       </div>
19283       <div class="body">
19284         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19285 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19286 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19287 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19288 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19289 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19290 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19291 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19292 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19293 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19294 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19295 drive around.</p>
19296
19297 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19298 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19299
19300 <p><pre>
19301 use Spykee;
19302 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19303 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19304 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19305 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19306 $spykee->left();
19307 sleep 2;
19308 $spykee->right();
19309 sleep 2;
19310 $spykee->forward();
19311 sleep 2;
19312 $spykee->back();
19313 sleep 2;
19314 $spykee->stop();
19315 </pre></p>
19316
19317 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19318 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19319 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19320 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19321 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19322 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19323 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19324 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19325 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19326 going. :).</p>
19327
19328 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19329 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19330 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19331 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19332
19333       </div>
19334       <div class="tags">
19335
19336
19337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
19338
19339
19340       </div>
19341     </div>
19342     <div class="padding"></div>
19343
19344     <div class="entry">
19345       <div class="title">
19346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19347       </div>
19348       <div class="date">
19349         30th August 2010
19350       </div>
19351       <div class="body">
19352         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19353 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19354 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19355 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19356 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19357 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19358 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19359
19360 <pre>
19361 % ln foo bar
19362 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19363 %
19364 </pre>
19365
19366 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19367 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19368 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19369 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19370 nevertheless. :)</p>
19371
19372 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19373 git from
19374 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19375
19376       </div>
19377       <div class="tags">
19378
19379
19380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19381
19382
19383       </div>
19384     </div>
19385     <div class="padding"></div>
19386
19387     <div class="entry">
19388       <div class="title">
19389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19390       </div>
19391       <div class="date">
19392         26th August 2010
19393       </div>
19394       <div class="body">
19395         <p>My file system sematics program
19396 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19397 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19398 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19399 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19400 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19401 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19402 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19403 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19404 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19405 script:</p>
19406
19407 <pre>
19408 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19409   mode_t retval = 0;
19410   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19411   if (-1 != fd) {
19412     unlink(name);
19413     struct stat statbuf;
19414     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19415       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19416     }
19417     close(fd);
19418   }
19419   return retval;
19420 }
19421
19422 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19423 int test_umask(void) {
19424   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19425
19426   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19427   mode_t newmode;
19428   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19429     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19430            newmode);
19431   }
19432   umask(007);
19433   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19434     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19435            newmode);
19436   }
19437
19438   umask (orig_umask);
19439   return 0;
19440 }
19441
19442 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19443   [...]
19444   test_umask();
19445   return 0;
19446 }
19447 </pre>
19448
19449 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19450
19451 <pre>
19452 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19453 info: testing symlink creation
19454 info: testing subdirectory creation
19455 info: testing fcntl locking
19456   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19457   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19458   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19459   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19460   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19461   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19462 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19463 </pre>
19464
19465 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19466 result:</p>
19467
19468 <pre>
19469 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19470 info: testing symlink creation
19471 info: testing subdirectory creation
19472 info: testing fcntl locking
19473   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19474   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19475   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19476   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19477   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19478   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19479 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19480   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19481   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19482 </pre>
19483
19484 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19485 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19486 directory.</p>
19487
19488 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19489 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19490
19491 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19492 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19493 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19494
19495       </div>
19496       <div class="tags">
19497
19498
19499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19500
19501
19502       </div>
19503     </div>
19504     <div class="padding"></div>
19505
19506     <div class="entry">
19507       <div class="title">
19508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19509       </div>
19510       <div class="date">
19511         15th August 2010
19512       </div>
19513       <div class="body">
19514         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19515 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19516 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19517 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19518 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19519 long time.</p>
19520
19521       </div>
19522       <div class="tags">
19523
19524
19525         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19526
19527
19528       </div>
19529     </div>
19530     <div class="padding"></div>
19531
19532     <div class="entry">
19533       <div class="title">
19534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19535       </div>
19536       <div class="date">
19537          9th August 2010
19538       </div>
19539       <div class="body">
19540         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19541 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19542 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19543 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19544 generated configuration.</p>
19545
19546 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19547 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19548 without any manual configuration.</p>
19549
19550 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19551 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19552 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19553 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19554 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19555 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19556 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19557 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19558 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19559 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19560 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19561 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19562 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19563 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19564 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19565 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19566 use.</p>
19567
19568 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19569 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19570 working properly out of the box:</p>
19571
19572 <ul>
19573 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19574 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19575 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19576 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19577 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19578 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19579 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19580 </ul>
19581
19582 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19583
19584 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19585 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19586 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19587 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19588 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19589
19590 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19591 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19592 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19593 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19594 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19595 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19596 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19597 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19598
19599 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19600 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19601 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19602 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19603 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19604 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19605 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19606 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19607 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19608 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19609 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19610 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19611 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19612 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19613 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19614 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19615
19616 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19617 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19618 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19619 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19620 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19621 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19622 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19623 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19624 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19625 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19626 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19627 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19628 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19629
19630 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19631 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19632 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19633 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19634 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19635 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19636 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19637 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19638 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19639 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19640 do for now. :)</p>
19641
19642 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19643 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19644 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19645 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19646 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19647 yet.</p>
19648
19649 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19650 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19651
19652 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19653 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19654 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19655 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19656
19657       </div>
19658       <div class="tags">
19659
19660
19661         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19662
19663
19664       </div>
19665     </div>
19666     <div class="padding"></div>
19667
19668     <div class="entry">
19669       <div class="title">
19670         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
19671       </div>
19672       <div class="date">
19673          8th August 2010
19674       </div>
19675       <div class="body">
19676         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19677 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19678 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19679 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19680 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19681 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19682 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19683
19684 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19685 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19686 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19687 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19688 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19689 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19690 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19691
19692 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19693 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19694 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19695 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19696 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19697
19698 <pre>
19699 /*
19700  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19701  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19702  * directory.
19703  * License: GPL v2 or later
19704  *
19705  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19706  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19707 */
19708
19709 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19710 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19711 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19712
19713 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19714
19715 #include &lt;errno.h>
19716 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19717 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19718 #include &lt;string.h>
19719 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19720 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19721 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19722 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19723 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19724
19725 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19726 /*
19727  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19728  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19729  * below.
19730  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19731  */
19732 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19733 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19734   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19735 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19736   char *zErrMsg;
19737   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19738   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19739   unlink(name);
19740   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19741   if( rc ){
19742     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19743     sqlite3_close(db);
19744     return -1;
19745   }
19746
19747   /* create tables */
19748   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19749   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19750     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19751     sqlite3_close(db);
19752     return -1;
19753   }
19754   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19755   sqlite3_close(db);
19756   return 0;
19757 }
19758 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19759
19760 /*
19761  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19762  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19763  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19764  * See also
19765  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19766  * POSIX specification
19767  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19768  */
19769 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19770   struct flock fl;
19771   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19772   unlink(name);
19773   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19774   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19775
19776   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19777   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19778   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19779   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19780   fl.l_len    = 1;
19781   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19782   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19783
19784   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19785   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19786   fl.l_len    = 510;
19787   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19788   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19789
19790   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19791   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19792   fl.l_len    = 1;
19793   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19794   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19795
19796   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19797   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19798   fl.l_len    = 1;
19799   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19800   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19801
19802   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19803   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19804   fl.l_len    = 510;
19805   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19806
19807   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19808   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19809   fl.l_len    = 2;
19810   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19811   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19812
19813   close(fd);
19814   return 0;
19815 }
19816
19817 /*
19818  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19819  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19820  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19821  * slowing down file operations.
19822  */
19823 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19824 #define LEVELS 5
19825   char *path = strdup("test");
19826   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19827   int level;
19828   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19829   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19830     char *newpath = NULL;
19831     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19832       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19833              path, strerror(errno));
19834       break;
19835     }
19836     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19837     free(path);
19838     path = newpath;
19839   }
19840   return 0;
19841 }
19842
19843 /*
19844  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19845  * KDE.
19846  */
19847 int test_symlinks(void) {
19848   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19849   unlink("symlink");
19850   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19851     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19852   return 0;
19853 }
19854
19855 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19856   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19857   test_symlinks();
19858   test_subdirectory_creation();
19859 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19860   test_sqlite_open();
19861 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19862   test_gcompris_locking();
19863   return 0;
19864 }
19865 </pre>
19866
19867 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19868 this:</p>
19869
19870 <pre>
19871 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19872 info: testing symlink creation
19873 info: testing subdirectory creation
19874 info: sqlite worked
19875 info: testing fcntl locking
19876   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19877   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19878   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19879   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19880   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19881   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19882 </pre>
19883
19884 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19885 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19886 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19887 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19888 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19889 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19890 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19891 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19892
19893 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19894 it. :)</p>
19895
19896 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19897 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19898 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19899
19900       </div>
19901       <div class="tags">
19902
19903
19904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19905
19906
19907       </div>
19908     </div>
19909     <div class="padding"></div>
19910
19911     <div class="entry">
19912       <div class="title">
19913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
19914       </div>
19915       <div class="date">
19916          7th August 2010
19917       </div>
19918       <div class="body">
19919         <p>A few days ago, I
19920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19921 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19922 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19923 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19924 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19925 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19926 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19927 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19928 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19929
19930 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19931 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19932 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19933 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19934 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19935 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19936 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19937 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19938 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19939 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19940 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19941 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19942 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19943 gave it a IP address.</p>
19944
19945 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19946 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19947 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19948 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19949 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19950 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19951 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19952 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19953
19954 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19955 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19956 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19957 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19958 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19959 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19960
19961 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19962 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
19963 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
19964 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
19965 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
19966 with UID and GID values.</p>
19967
19968 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19969 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19970
19971       </div>
19972       <div class="tags">
19973
19974
19975         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19976
19977
19978       </div>
19979     </div>
19980     <div class="padding"></div>
19981
19982     <div class="entry">
19983       <div class="title">
19984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
19985       </div>
19986       <div class="date">
19987          3rd August 2010
19988       </div>
19989       <div class="body">
19990         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
19991 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
19992 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
19993 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
19994 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
19995 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
19996 servers.</p>
19997
19998 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
19999 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
20000 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
20001 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
20002 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
20003 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
20004 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
20005 .uio.no.</p>
20006
20007 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
20008 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
20009 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
20010 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
20011 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
20012 university servers.</p>
20013
20014 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
20015 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
20016 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
20017 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
20018 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
20019 uses.</p>
20020
20021       </div>
20022       <div class="tags">
20023
20024
20025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20026
20027
20028       </div>
20029     </div>
20030     <div class="padding"></div>
20031
20032     <div class="entry">
20033       <div class="title">
20034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
20035       </div>
20036       <div class="date">
20037         27th July 2010
20038       </div>
20039       <div class="body">
20040         <p>I discovered this while doing
20041 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
20042 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
20043 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
20044 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
20045 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
20046
20047 <p>An example is from todays
20048 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20049 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20050 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20051 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20052 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20053 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20054 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20055
20056 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20057
20058 <blockquote><pre>
20059 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20060  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20061   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20062 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20063  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20064 </pre></blockquote>
20065
20066 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20067 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20068 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20069 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20070 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20071 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20072 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20073 of dependency loops.</p>
20074
20075 <p>Thanks to
20076 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20077 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20078 dependencies
20079 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20080 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20081
20082 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20083 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20084 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20085 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20086 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20087 it.</p>
20088
20089       </div>
20090       <div class="tags">
20091
20092
20093         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>.
20094
20095
20096       </div>
20097     </div>
20098     <div class="padding"></div>
20099
20100     <div class="entry">
20101       <div class="title">
20102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
20103       </div>
20104       <div class="date">
20105         27th July 2010
20106       </div>
20107       <div class="body">
20108         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20109 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20110 completed.</p>
20111
20112 <blockquote>
20113 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20114 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20115 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20116 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20117 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20118 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20119 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20120 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20121
20122 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20123 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20124 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20125
20126 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20127 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20128 much.</p>
20129
20130 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20131
20132 <ul>
20133 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20134 <ul>
20135   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20136          combination with some new artwork
20137   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20138   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20139   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20140   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20141   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20142   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20143   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20144   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20145   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20146 </ul></li>
20147 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20148     Enabled for:
20149 <ul>
20150   <li>PAM
20151   <li>LDAP
20152   <li>IMAP
20153   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20154 </ul>
20155 </li>
20156 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20157 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20158     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20159 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20160 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20161 </ul>
20162 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20163
20164 <ul>
20165 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20166     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20167     for testing.</li>
20168 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20169     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20170     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20171 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20172 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20173 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20174 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20175     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20176 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20177     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20178     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20179 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20180     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20181     and help out with translations.</li>
20182 </ul>
20183
20184 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20185
20186 <ul>
20187 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
20188 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
20189 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20190 </ul>
20191 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20192
20193 <ul>
20194 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
20195 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
20196 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20197 </ul>
20198
20199 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20200 get closer to the final release.</p>
20201
20202 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20203
20204 <ul>
20205 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20206 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20207 </ul>
20208
20209 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20210 <ul>
20211 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20212 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20213 </ul>
20214 <p>How to report bugs:
20215 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20216
20217 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20218 </blockquote>
20219
20220       </div>
20221       <div class="tags">
20222
20223
20224         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20225
20226
20227       </div>
20228     </div>
20229     <div class="padding"></div>
20230
20231     <div class="entry">
20232       <div class="title">
20233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
20234       </div>
20235       <div class="date">
20236         25th July 2010
20237       </div>
20238       <div class="body">
20239         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20240 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20241 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20242 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20243 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20244
20245 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20246 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20247 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20248 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20249 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20250 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20251 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20252
20253 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20254 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20255 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20256 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20257 up. :)</p>
20258
20259 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20260 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20261 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20262
20263 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20264 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20265 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20266 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20267 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20268 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20269 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20270 release another day.</p>
20271
20272 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20273 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20274
20275       </div>
20276       <div class="tags">
20277
20278
20279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
20280
20281
20282       </div>
20283     </div>
20284     <div class="padding"></div>
20285
20286     <div class="entry">
20287       <div class="title">
20288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
20289       </div>
20290       <div class="date">
20291         18th July 2010
20292       </div>
20293       <div class="body">
20294         <p>Thanks to
20295 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20296 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20297 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20298 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20299 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20300 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20301 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20302
20303 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20304 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20305 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20306 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20307 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20308 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20309 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20310
20311       </div>
20312       <div class="tags">
20313
20314
20315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20316
20317
20318       </div>
20319     </div>
20320     <div class="padding"></div>
20321
20322     <div class="entry">
20323       <div class="title">
20324         <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>
20325       </div>
20326       <div class="date">
20327         17th July 2010
20328       </div>
20329       <div class="body">
20330         <p>This is a
20331 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20332 on my
20333 <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
20334 work</a> on
20335 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20336 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20337
20338 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20339 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20340 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20341 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20342
20343 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20344 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20345 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20346
20347 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20348
20349 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20350 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20351 the web.
20352
20353 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20354 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20355 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20356 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20357 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20358 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20359
20360 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20361 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20362 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20363 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20364 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20365 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20366 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20367 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20368 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20369 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20370 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20371 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20372 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20373 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20374 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20375 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20376
20377 <blockquote><pre>
20378 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20379   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20380   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20381   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20382   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20383   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20384   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20385
20386 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20387   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20388   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20389   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20390   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20391   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20392 </pre></blockquote>
20393
20394 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20395 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20396 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20397 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20398 also exist.</p>
20399
20400 <blockquote><pre>
20401 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20402 objectclass: top
20403 objectclass: dnsdomain
20404 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20405 dc: tjener
20406 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20407 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20408
20409 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20410 objectclass: top
20411 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20412 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20413 dc: 2
20414 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20415 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20416 </pre></blockquote>
20417
20418 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20419 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20420 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20421 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20422 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20423 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20424 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20425 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20426 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20427 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20428 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20429 instead.</p>
20430
20431 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20432 like this:</p>
20433
20434 <blockquote><pre>
20435 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20436   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20437   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20438   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20439   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20440   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20441
20442 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20443   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20444 </pre></blockquote>
20445
20446 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20447 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20448 reverse lookups.</p>
20449
20450 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20451 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20452 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20453 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20454
20455 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20456 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20457 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20458
20459 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20460 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20461 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20462 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20463 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20464
20465 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20466 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20467 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20468 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20469 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20470
20471 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20472 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20473 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20474 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20475 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20476 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20477
20478 <blockquote><pre>
20479 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20480     SUP top
20481     AUXILIARY
20482     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20483           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20484           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20485           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20486           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20487     ))
20488 </pre></blockquote>
20489
20490 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20491 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20492 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20493 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20494 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20495 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20496
20497 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20498
20499 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20500 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20501 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20502 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20503 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20504
20505 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20506 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20507 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20508 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20509
20510 <blockquote><pre>
20511 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20512 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20513 </pre></blockquote>
20514
20515 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20516 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20517 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20518 search result is this entry:</p>
20519
20520 <blockquote><pre>
20521 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20522 cn: dhcp
20523 objectClass: top
20524 objectClass: dhcpServer
20525 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20526 </pre></blockquote>
20527
20528 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20529 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20530 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20531 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20532 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20533 The search result is this entry:</p>
20534
20535 <blockquote><pre>
20536 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20537 cn: DHCP Config
20538 objectClass: top
20539 objectClass: dhcpService
20540 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20541 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20542 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20543 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20544 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20545 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20546 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20547 </pre></blockquote>
20548
20549 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20550 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20551 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20552 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20553 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20554 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20555 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20556 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20557 related computer objects.</p>
20558
20559 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20560 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20561 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20562 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20563 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20564 like:</p>
20565
20566 <blockquote><pre>
20567 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20568 cn: hostname
20569 objectClass: top
20570 objectClass: dhcpHost
20571 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20572 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20573 </pre></blockquote>
20574
20575 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20576 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20577 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20578 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20579 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20580 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20581 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20582 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20583 structural object class.
20584
20585 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20586
20587 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20588 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20589 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20590 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20591 in the configuration.</p>
20592
20593 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20594 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20595 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20596 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20597 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20598 structure.</p>
20599
20600 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20601 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20602
20603 <blockquote><pre>
20604 ou=services
20605   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20606     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20607     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20608       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20609         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20610     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20611       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20612         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20613     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20614       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20615 </pre></blockquote>
20616
20617 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20618 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20619 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20620 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20621
20622 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20623 like this:</p>
20624
20625 <blockquote><pre>
20626 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20627 dc: hostname
20628 objectClass: top
20629 objectClass: dhcpHost
20630 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20631 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20632 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20633 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20634 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20635 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20636 </pre></blockquote>
20637
20638 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20639 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20640 auxiliary object class.</p>
20641
20642       </div>
20643       <div class="tags">
20644
20645
20646         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>.
20647
20648
20649       </div>
20650     </div>
20651     <div class="padding"></div>
20652
20653     <div class="entry">
20654       <div class="title">
20655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20656       </div>
20657       <div class="date">
20658         14th July 2010
20659       </div>
20660       <div class="body">
20661         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20662 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20663 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20664 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20665 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20666
20667 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20668 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20669
20670 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20671 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20672 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20673 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20674 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20675 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20676
20677 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20678 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20679 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20680 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20681 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20682 seem to work.</p>
20683
20684 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20685 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20686 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20687 this:</p>
20688
20689 <blockquote><pre>
20690   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20691   cn: hostname
20692   objectClass: dhcphost
20693   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20694   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20695   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20696   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20697   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20698   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20699   ldapconfigsound: Y
20700 </pre></blockquote>
20701
20702 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20703 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20704 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20705 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20706
20707 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20708 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20709 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20710 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20711 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20712 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20713 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20714 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20715
20716 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20717 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20718
20719       </div>
20720       <div class="tags">
20721
20722
20723         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>.
20724
20725
20726       </div>
20727     </div>
20728     <div class="padding"></div>
20729
20730     <div class="entry">
20731       <div class="title">
20732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20733       </div>
20734       <div class="date">
20735         11th July 2010
20736       </div>
20737       <div class="body">
20738         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20739 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20740 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20741 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20742
20743 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20744 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20745 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20746 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20747 LTSP clients.</p>
20748
20749 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20750 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20751 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20752
20753 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20754 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20755 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20756
20757 <blockquote><pre>
20758 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20759 #
20760 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20761 #
20762 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20763 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20764 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20765 #
20766 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20767 # existence of attribute names.
20768 #
20769 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20770 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20771 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20772 #
20773 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20774 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20775 #
20776 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20777 #     SUP top
20778 #     AUXILIARY
20779 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20780
20781 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20782 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20783     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20784     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20785         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20786         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20787             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20788             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20789             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20790             # bass value on to clients
20791             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20792         done
20793     done
20794 fi
20795 </pre></blockquote>
20796
20797 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20798 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20799 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20800 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20801 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20802
20803 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20804 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20805
20806 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20807 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20808 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20809 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20810 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20811 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20812
20813       </div>
20814       <div class="tags">
20815
20816
20817         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>.
20818
20819
20820       </div>
20821     </div>
20822     <div class="padding"></div>
20823
20824     <div class="entry">
20825       <div class="title">
20826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20827       </div>
20828       <div class="date">
20829          9th July 2010
20830       </div>
20831       <div class="body">
20832         <p>Since
20833 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20834 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20835 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20836 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20837 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20838 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20839 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20840 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20841 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20842 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20843 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20844 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20845 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20846
20847       </div>
20848       <div class="tags">
20849
20850
20851         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>.
20852
20853
20854       </div>
20855     </div>
20856     <div class="padding"></div>
20857
20858     <div class="entry">
20859       <div class="title">
20860         <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>
20861       </div>
20862       <div class="date">
20863          3rd July 2010
20864       </div>
20865       <div class="body">
20866         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20867 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20868 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20869 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20870 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20871 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20872 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20873 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20874
20875 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20876 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20877 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20878 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20879 publish the difference.</p>
20880
20881 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20882
20883 <blockquote><p>
20884   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20885   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20886   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20887   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20888   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20889   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20890   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20891   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20892 </p></blockquote>
20893
20894 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20895
20896 <blockquote><p>
20897   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20898   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20899   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20900   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20901   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20902   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20903   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20904   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20905   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20906   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20907   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20908   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20909   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20910   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20911   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20912   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20913   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20914   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20915   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20916   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20917 </p></blockquote>
20918
20919 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20920
20921 <blockquote><p>
20922   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20923   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20924   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20925   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20926   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20927   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20928   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20929   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20930   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20931   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20932   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20933   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20934   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20935   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20936   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20937   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20938   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20939   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20940   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20941   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20942   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20943 </p></blockquote>
20944
20945 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20946
20947 <blockquote><p>
20948   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20949   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20950   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20951 </p></blockquote>
20952
20953 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20954 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20955 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20956 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20957 the difference somewhat.
20958
20959       </div>
20960       <div class="tags">
20961
20962
20963         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>.
20964
20965
20966       </div>
20967     </div>
20968     <div class="padding"></div>
20969
20970     <div class="entry">
20971       <div class="title">
20972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
20973       </div>
20974       <div class="date">
20975          1st July 2010
20976       </div>
20977       <div class="body">
20978         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
20979 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
20980 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
20981 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
20982 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
20983 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
20984 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
20985 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
20986 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
20987
20988 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20989
20990 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
20991 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
20992 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
20993 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
20994 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
20995 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
20996 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
20997 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
20998 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
20999 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
21000 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
21001 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
21002 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
21003 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
21004 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
21005
21006 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
21007
21008 <blockquote><pre>
21009 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
21010 </pre></blockquote>
21011
21012 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
21013 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
21014 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
21015 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
21016 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
21017 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
21018 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
21019 on how to get this working.</p>
21020
21021 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
21022 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
21023 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
21024 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
21025 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
21026 instructions I found in the
21027 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
21028 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
21029
21030 <blockquote><pre>
21031         debug-level             0
21032         reload-count            unlimited
21033         paranoia                no
21034
21035         enable-cache            passwd          yes
21036         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
21037         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
21038         suggested-size          passwd          211
21039         check-files             passwd          yes
21040         persistent              passwd          yes
21041         shared                  passwd          yes
21042         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
21043         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
21044
21045         enable-cache            group           yes
21046         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21047         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21048         suggested-size          group           211
21049         check-files             group           yes
21050         persistent              group           yes
21051         shared                  group           yes
21052         max-db-size             group           33554432
21053         auto-propagate          group           yes
21054
21055         enable-cache            hosts           no
21056         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21057         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21058         suggested-size          hosts           211
21059         check-files             hosts           yes
21060         persistent              hosts           yes
21061         shared                  hosts           yes
21062         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21063
21064         enable-cache            services        yes
21065         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21066         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21067         suggested-size          services        211
21068         check-files             services        yes
21069         persistent              services        yes
21070         shared                  services        yes
21071         max-db-size             services        33554432
21072 </pre></blockquote>
21073
21074 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21075 automatically like the one provided in
21076 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21077 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21078 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21079 look like this:</p>
21080
21081 <blockquote><pre>
21082 passwd:         files ldap
21083 group:          files ldap
21084 shadow:         files ldap
21085 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21086 networks:       files
21087 protocols:      files
21088 services:       files
21089 ethers:         files
21090 rpc:            files
21091 netgroup:       files ldap
21092 </pre></blockquote>
21093
21094 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21095 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21096
21097 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21098 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21099 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21100 attributes cached.
21101
21102 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21103   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21104
21105 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21106 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21107 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21108 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21109 discovered sssd.</p>
21110
21111 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21112
21113 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21114 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21115 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21116 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21117 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21118 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21119 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21120 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21121 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21122 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21123 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21124 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21125 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21126
21127 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21128 roaming setup I want</p>
21129
21130 <blockquote><pre>
21131 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21132 </pre></blockquote>
21133
21134 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21135 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21136
21137 <blockquote><pre>
21138 [sssd]
21139 config_file_version = 2
21140 reconnection_retries = 3
21141 sbus_timeout = 30
21142 services = nss, pam
21143 domains = INTERN
21144
21145 [nss]
21146 filter_groups = root
21147 filter_users = root
21148 reconnection_retries = 3
21149
21150 [pam]
21151 reconnection_retries = 3
21152
21153 [domain/INTERN]
21154 enumerate = false
21155 cache_credentials = true
21156
21157 id_provider = ldap
21158 auth_provider = ldap
21159 chpass_provider = ldap
21160
21161 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21162 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21163 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21164 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21165 </pre></blockquote>
21166
21167 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21168 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21169
21170 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21171 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21172 modify it manually.</p>
21173
21174 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21175 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21176
21177       </div>
21178       <div class="tags">
21179
21180
21181         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21182
21183
21184       </div>
21185     </div>
21186     <div class="padding"></div>
21187
21188     <div class="entry">
21189       <div class="title">
21190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21191       </div>
21192       <div class="date">
21193         28th June 2010
21194       </div>
21195       <div class="body">
21196         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21197 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21198 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21199 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21200 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21201 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21202 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21203 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21204 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21205 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21206
21207 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21208 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21209 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21210 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21211 released.</p>
21212
21213 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21214 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21215 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21216 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21217
21218 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21219 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21220
21221 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21222 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21223 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21224 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21225 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21226
21227       </div>
21228       <div class="tags">
21229
21230
21231         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>.
21232
21233
21234       </div>
21235     </div>
21236     <div class="padding"></div>
21237
21238     <div class="entry">
21239       <div class="title">
21240         <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>
21241       </div>
21242       <div class="date">
21243         24th June 2010
21244       </div>
21245       <div class="body">
21246         <p>A while back, I
21247 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21248 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21249 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21250 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21251
21252 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21253 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21254 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21255 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21256
21257 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21258 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21259 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21260 Debian Edu.</p>
21261
21262 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21263 the
21264 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21265 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21266 available today from IETF.</p>
21267
21268 <pre>
21269 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21270 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21271 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21272  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21273         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21274         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21275 -       SUP top
21276 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21277         MUST cn
21278         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21279         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21280 </pre>
21281
21282 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21283 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21284 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21285
21286 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21287 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21288
21289       </div>
21290       <div class="tags">
21291
21292
21293         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>.
21294
21295
21296       </div>
21297     </div>
21298     <div class="padding"></div>
21299
21300     <div class="entry">
21301       <div class="title">
21302         <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>
21303       </div>
21304       <div class="date">
21305         16th June 2010
21306       </div>
21307       <div class="body">
21308         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21309 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21310 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21311 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21312 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21313 this:
21314
21315 <blockquote><pre>
21316 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21317 tasksel --new-install
21318 </pre></blockquote>
21319
21320 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21321 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21322 any output what so ever.
21323
21324 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21325 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21326 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21327 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21328 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21329 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21330 code like this:
21331
21332 <blockquote><pre>
21333 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21334 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21335 $cmd
21336 </pre></blockquote>
21337
21338 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21339 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21340 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21341 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21342 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21343 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21344 installation.</p>
21345
21346 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21347 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21348 like this.</p>
21349
21350       </div>
21351       <div class="tags">
21352
21353
21354         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>.
21355
21356
21357       </div>
21358     </div>
21359     <div class="padding"></div>
21360
21361     <div class="entry">
21362       <div class="title">
21363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21364       </div>
21365       <div class="date">
21366         13th June 2010
21367       </div>
21368       <div class="body">
21369         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21370 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21371 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21372 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21373 pages.</p>
21374
21375 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21376 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21377 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21378 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21379 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21380 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21381 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21382 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21383 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21384 see how the project is doing.</p>
21385
21386 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21387 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21388 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21389 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21390 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21391
21392       </div>
21393       <div class="tags">
21394
21395
21396         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
21397
21398
21399       </div>
21400     </div>
21401     <div class="padding"></div>
21402
21403     <div class="entry">
21404       <div class="title">
21405         <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>
21406       </div>
21407       <div class="date">
21408         13th June 2010
21409       </div>
21410       <div class="body">
21411         <p>My
21412 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21413 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21414 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21415 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21416 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21417 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21418 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21419
21420 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21421 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21422 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21423 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21424 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21425 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21426 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21427 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21428
21429 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21430 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21431 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21432 too surprising.</p>
21433
21434 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21435 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21436 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21437 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21438 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21439 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21440 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21441 continue.</p>
21442
21443 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21444 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21445   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21446   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21447   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21448   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21449   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21450   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21451   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21452   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21453   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21454   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21455   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21456   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21457   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21458   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21459   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21460   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21461   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21462   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21463   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21464   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21465   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21466   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21467   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21468   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21469   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21470   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21471   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21472   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21473
21474 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21475
21476 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21477   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21478   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21479   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21480   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21481   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21482   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21483   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21484   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21485   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21486   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21487   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21488   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21489   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21490   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21491   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21492   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21493   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21494   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21495   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21496   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21497   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21498   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21499   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21500   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21501   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21502   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21503   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21504   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21505   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21506   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21507   zip</p>
21508
21509 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21510
21511 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21512   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21513   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21514   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21515   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21516   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21517   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21518   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21519   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21520   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21521   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21522   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21523   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21524   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21525   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21526   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21527   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21528   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21529   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21530   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21531   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21532   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21533   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21534   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21535   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21536   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21537   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21538   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21539
21540 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21541 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21542   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21543   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21544   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21545   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21546   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21547   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21548   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21549   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21550   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21551   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21552   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21553   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21554   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21555   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21556   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21557   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21558   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21559   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21560   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21561   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21562   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21563   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21564   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21565   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21566   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21567   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21568   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21569   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21570   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21571   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21572   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21573   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21574   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21575   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21576   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21577   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21578
21579
21580       </div>
21581       <div class="tags">
21582
21583
21584         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>.
21585
21586
21587       </div>
21588     </div>
21589     <div class="padding"></div>
21590
21591     <div class="entry">
21592       <div class="title">
21593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21594       </div>
21595       <div class="date">
21596         11th June 2010
21597       </div>
21598       <div class="body">
21599         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21600 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21601 have been discovered and reported in the process
21602 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21603 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21604 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21605 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21606 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21607
21608 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21609 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21610 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21611 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21612 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21613 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21614
21615 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21616 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21617 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21618 is created.  The bug report
21619 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21620 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21621 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21622 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21623 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21624 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21625 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21626 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21627 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21628 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21629 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21630 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21631 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21632
21633 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21634 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21635 trick:</p>
21636
21637 <blockquote><pre>
21638 #!/bin/sh
21639 set -ex
21640
21641 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21642     desktop=$1
21643 else
21644     desktop=gnome
21645 fi
21646
21647 from=lenny
21648 to=squeeze
21649
21650 exec &lt; /dev/null
21651 unset LANG
21652 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21653 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21654 fuser -mv .
21655 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21656 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21657 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21658 #!/bin/sh
21659 exit 101
21660 EOF
21661 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21662 exit_cleanup() {
21663     umount $tmpdir/proc
21664 }
21665 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21666 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21667 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21668
21669 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21670
21671 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21672 # to return the correct answers.
21673 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21674     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21675
21676 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21677 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21678     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21679 #!/bin/sh
21680 exit 2
21681 EOF
21682     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21683 done
21684
21685 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21686 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21687 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21688 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21689
21690 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21691 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21692 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21693 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21694 fuser -mv
21695 </pre></blockquote>
21696
21697 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21698 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21699 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21700 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21701 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21702 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21703
21704 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21705 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21706 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21707 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21708 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21709 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21710 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21711
21712 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21713 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21714 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21715 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21716 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21717 packages.</p>
21718
21719       </div>
21720       <div class="tags">
21721
21722
21723         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>.
21724
21725
21726       </div>
21727     </div>
21728     <div class="padding"></div>
21729
21730     <div class="entry">
21731       <div class="title">
21732         <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>
21733       </div>
21734       <div class="date">
21735          6th June 2010
21736       </div>
21737       <div class="body">
21738         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21739 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21740 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21741 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21742 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21743 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21744 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21745
21746 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21747 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21748 COLUMNS):</p>
21749
21750 <blockquote><pre>
21751 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21752 previous=N
21753 PREVLEVEL=
21754 RUNLEVEL=
21755 runlevel=S
21756 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21757 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21758 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21759 </pre></blockquote>
21760
21761 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21762 script.</p>
21763
21764 <blockquote><pre>
21765 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21766 previous=N
21767 PREVLEVEL=N
21768 RUNLEVEL=S
21769 runlevel=S
21770 </pre></blockquote>
21771
21772 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21773 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21774 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21775
21776 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21777 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21778 choice.</p>
21779
21780       </div>
21781       <div class="tags">
21782
21783
21784         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>.
21785
21786
21787       </div>
21788     </div>
21789     <div class="padding"></div>
21790
21791     <div class="entry">
21792       <div class="title">
21793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21794       </div>
21795       <div class="date">
21796          6th June 2010
21797       </div>
21798       <div class="body">
21799         <p>Via the
21800 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21801 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21802 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21803 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21804 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21805
21806       </div>
21807       <div class="tags">
21808
21809
21810         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>.
21811
21812
21813       </div>
21814     </div>
21815     <div class="padding"></div>
21816
21817     <div class="entry">
21818       <div class="title">
21819         <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>
21820       </div>
21821       <div class="date">
21822          3rd June 2010
21823       </div>
21824       <div class="body">
21825         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21826 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21827 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21828 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21829 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21830
21831 <blockquote><pre>
21832 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21833   vendor                    count
21834   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21835     PowerEdge 1750              1
21836   IBM                           1
21837     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21838   Intel                         2
21839   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21840 maintainer:~#
21841 </pre></blockquote>
21842
21843 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21844 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21845 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21846 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21847 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21848
21849 <p>A larger list is
21850 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21851 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21852 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21853 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21854 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21855 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21856 collector.</p>
21857
21858       </div>
21859       <div class="tags">
21860
21861
21862         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>.
21863
21864
21865       </div>
21866     </div>
21867     <div class="padding"></div>
21868
21869     <div class="entry">
21870       <div class="title">
21871         <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>
21872       </div>
21873       <div class="date">
21874          1st June 2010
21875       </div>
21876       <div class="body">
21877         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21878 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21879 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21880 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21881 wait.</p>
21882
21883 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21884 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21885 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21886 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21887 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21888 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21889
21890 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21891 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21892 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21893 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21894 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21895 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21896 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21897 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21898
21899 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21900
21901       </div>
21902       <div class="tags">
21903
21904
21905         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>.
21906
21907
21908       </div>
21909     </div>
21910     <div class="padding"></div>
21911
21912     <div class="entry">
21913       <div class="title">
21914         <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>
21915       </div>
21916       <div class="date">
21917         27th May 2010
21918       </div>
21919       <div class="body">
21920         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21921 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21922 issues are known and should be solved:
21923
21924 <p><ul>
21925
21926 <li>The wicd package seen to
21927 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21928 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21929 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21930 seem to be on the case.</li>
21931
21932 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21933 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21934 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21935 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21936
21937 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21938 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21939 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21940 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21941 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21942 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21943 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21944 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21945
21946 </ul></p>
21947
21948 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21949 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21950 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21951 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21952
21953 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21954 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21955 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21956 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21957
21958 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21959
21960       </div>
21961       <div class="tags">
21962
21963
21964         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>.
21965
21966
21967       </div>
21968     </div>
21969     <div class="padding"></div>
21970
21971     <div class="entry">
21972       <div class="title">
21973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
21974       </div>
21975       <div class="date">
21976         22nd May 2010
21977       </div>
21978       <div class="body">
21979         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
21980 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
21981 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
21982 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
21983
21984 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
21985 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
21986 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
21987 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
21988 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
21989 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
21990 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
21991 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
21992 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
21993 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
21994 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
21995 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
21996 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
21997 going to work.</p>
21998
21999 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
22000 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
22001 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
22002 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
22003 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
22004 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
22005 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
22006 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
22007 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
22008 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
22009 Edu.</p>
22010
22011 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
22012 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
22013 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
22014 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
22015 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
22016 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
22017
22018 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
22019 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
22020
22021       </div>
22022       <div class="tags">
22023
22024
22025         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>.
22026
22027
22028       </div>
22029     </div>
22030     <div class="padding"></div>
22031
22032     <div class="entry">
22033       <div class="title">
22034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
22035       </div>
22036       <div class="date">
22037         19th May 2010
22038       </div>
22039       <div class="body">
22040         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
22041 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
22042 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
22043 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
22044 into unstable.  The
22045 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
22046 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22047 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22048 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22049 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22050 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22051 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22052
22053 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22054 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22055 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22056 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22057 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22058 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22059 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22060 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22061
22062 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22063 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22064 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22065 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22066 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22067 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22068 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22069
22070 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22071 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22072 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22073 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22074 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22075 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22076 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22077 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22078 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22079 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22080 on the home directory servers.</p>
22081
22082 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22083 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22084 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22085 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22086 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22087 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22088
22089 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22090 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22091
22092       </div>
22093       <div class="tags">
22094
22095
22096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22097
22098
22099       </div>
22100     </div>
22101     <div class="padding"></div>
22102
22103     <div class="entry">
22104       <div class="title">
22105         <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>
22106       </div>
22107       <div class="date">
22108         14th May 2010
22109       </div>
22110       <div class="body">
22111         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22112 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22113 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22114 expected, if I am to believe the
22115 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22116 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22117 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22118 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22119 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22120 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22121 version.</p>
22122
22123 More information about
22124 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22125 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22126 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22127 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22128
22129 <blockquote><pre>
22130 CONCURRENCY=none
22131 </pre></blockquote>
22132
22133 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22134 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22135 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22136 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22137
22138       </div>
22139       <div class="tags">
22140
22141
22142         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>.
22143
22144
22145       </div>
22146     </div>
22147     <div class="padding"></div>
22148
22149     <div class="entry">
22150       <div class="title">
22151         <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>
22152       </div>
22153       <div class="date">
22154         14th May 2010
22155       </div>
22156       <div class="body">
22157         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22158 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22159 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22160 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22161 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22162 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22163 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22164 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22165
22166 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22167 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22168 this on the collector host:</p>
22169
22170 <blockquote><pre>
22171 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22172 </pre></blockquote>
22173
22174 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22175 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22176
22177 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22178 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22179 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22180 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22181 written yet.</p>
22182
22183       </div>
22184       <div class="tags">
22185
22186
22187         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>.
22188
22189
22190       </div>
22191     </div>
22192     <div class="padding"></div>
22193
22194     <div class="entry">
22195       <div class="title">
22196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22197       </div>
22198       <div class="date">
22199         13th May 2010
22200       </div>
22201       <div class="body">
22202         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22203 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22204 has been
22205 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22206
22207 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22208 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22209 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22210 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22211 based boot system.  Tollef is
22212 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22213 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22214 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22215 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22216 at the moment do not.</p>
22217
22218 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22219 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22220 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22221 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22222 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22223 way forward.</p>
22224
22225 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22226 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22227 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22228 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22229 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22230 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22231 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22232 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22233 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22234
22235       </div>
22236       <div class="tags">
22237
22238
22239         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>.
22240
22241
22242       </div>
22243     </div>
22244     <div class="padding"></div>
22245
22246     <div class="entry">
22247       <div class="title">
22248         <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>
22249       </div>
22250       <div class="date">
22251          6th May 2010
22252       </div>
22253       <div class="body">
22254         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22255 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22256 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22257 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22258 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22259 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22260 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22261
22262 <blockquote><pre>
22263 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22264 </pre></blockquote>
22265
22266 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22267 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22268 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22269 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22270 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22271 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22272 make this happen.</p>
22273
22274 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22275 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22276 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22277 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22278 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22279
22280 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22281 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22282 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22283 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22284
22285 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22286 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22287 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22288 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22289
22290       </div>
22291       <div class="tags">
22292
22293
22294         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>.
22295
22296
22297       </div>
22298     </div>
22299     <div class="padding"></div>
22300
22301     <div class="entry">
22302       <div class="title">
22303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
22304       </div>
22305       <div class="date">
22306          2nd May 2010
22307       </div>
22308       <div class="body">
22309         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22310 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22311 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22312
22313 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22314 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22315 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22316 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22317 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22318
22319 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22320 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22321
22322 <blockquote><pre>
22323 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22324 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22325 Password expires                                        : never
22326 Password inactive                                       : never
22327 Account expires                                         : never
22328 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22329 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22330 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22331 root@tjener:~#
22332 </pre></blockquote>
22333
22334 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22335 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22336 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22337 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22338 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22339 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22340
22341 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22342 intended:</p>
22343
22344 <blockquote><pre>
22345 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22346 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22347 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22348 Password expires                                        : never
22349 Password inactive                                       : never
22350 Account expires                                         : never
22351 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22352 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22353 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22354 root@tjener:~#
22355 </pre></blockquote>
22356
22357 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22358 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22359 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22360
22361 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22362 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22363
22364 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22365 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22366
22367 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22368 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22369 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22370 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22371 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22372 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22373 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22374
22375 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22376 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22377 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22378 change.</p>
22379
22380       </div>
22381       <div class="tags">
22382
22383
22384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
22385
22386
22387       </div>
22388     </div>
22389     <div class="padding"></div>
22390
22391     <div class="entry">
22392       <div class="title">
22393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
22394       </div>
22395       <div class="date">
22396         28th April 2010
22397       </div>
22398       <div class="body">
22399         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22400 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22401 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22402 and go.</p>
22403
22404 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22405 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22406 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22407 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22408
22409 <ul>
22410
22411  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22412    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22413    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22414    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22415    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22416    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22417    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22418    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22419    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22420    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22421    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22422    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22423
22424  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22425    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22426    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22427    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22428    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22429    or the Fedora developed
22430    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22431    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22432
22433  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22434    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22435    directory, using unison.</li>
22436
22437  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22438    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22439    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22440    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22441    implemented.</li>
22442
22443  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22444    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22445
22446  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22447    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22448    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22449
22450 </ul>
22451
22452 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22453 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22454 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22455 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22456 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22457 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22458 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22459 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22460 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22461
22462 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22463 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22464
22465       </div>
22466       <div class="tags">
22467
22468
22469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22470
22471
22472       </div>
22473     </div>
22474     <div class="padding"></div>
22475
22476     <div class="entry">
22477       <div class="title">
22478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
22479       </div>
22480       <div class="date">
22481         19th April 2010
22482       </div>
22483       <div class="body">
22484         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22485 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22486 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22487 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22488 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22489 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22490 restrictions on the web, for example from
22491 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22492 epub-version from
22493 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22494 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22495 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22496
22497       </div>
22498       <div class="tags">
22499
22500
22501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22502
22503
22504       </div>
22505     </div>
22506     <div class="padding"></div>
22507
22508     <div class="entry">
22509       <div class="title">
22510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22511       </div>
22512       <div class="date">
22513         14th April 2010
22514       </div>
22515       <div class="body">
22516         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22517 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22518 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22519 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22520 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22521 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22522 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22523 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22524 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22525
22526 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22527 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22528 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22529 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22530 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22531
22532 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22533 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22534
22535 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22536 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22537 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22538 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22539 to work properly.</p>
22540
22541 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22542 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22543 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22544 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22545 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22546 time.</p>
22547
22548 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22549 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22550 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22551 up in a few days.</p>
22552
22553       </div>
22554       <div class="tags">
22555
22556
22557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22558
22559
22560       </div>
22561     </div>
22562     <div class="padding"></div>
22563
22564     <div class="entry">
22565       <div class="title">
22566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
22567       </div>
22568       <div class="date">
22569          6th March 2010
22570       </div>
22571       <div class="body">
22572         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22573 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22574 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22575 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22576 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22577 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22578
22579 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22580 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22581 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22582 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22583
22584 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22585 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22586 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22587 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22588 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22589 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22590
22591       </div>
22592       <div class="tags">
22593
22594
22595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22596
22597
22598       </div>
22599     </div>
22600     <div class="padding"></div>
22601
22602     <div class="entry">
22603       <div class="title">
22604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
22605       </div>
22606       <div class="date">
22607         11th February 2010
22608       </div>
22609       <div class="body">
22610         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22612 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22613 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22614 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22615 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22616 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22617
22618 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22619
22620 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22621 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22622 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22623 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22624
22625       </div>
22626       <div class="tags">
22627
22628
22629         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22630
22631
22632       </div>
22633     </div>
22634     <div class="padding"></div>
22635
22636     <div class="entry">
22637       <div class="title">
22638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22639       </div>
22640       <div class="date">
22641         27th January 2010
22642       </div>
22643       <div class="body">
22644         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22645 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22646 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22647 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22648 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22649 further.</p>
22650
22651 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22652 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22653 configured to be a server for the
22654 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22655 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22656 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22657 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22658 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22659 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22660 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22661 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22662 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22663 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22664
22665 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22666 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22667 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22668 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22669
22670 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22671 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22672 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22673 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22674 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22675 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22676 the machine.</p>
22677
22678 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22679 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22680 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22681 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22682
22683 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22684 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22685 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22686 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22687 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22688 everything is taken care of.</p>
22689
22690       </div>
22691       <div class="tags">
22692
22693
22694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
22695
22696
22697       </div>
22698     </div>
22699     <div class="padding"></div>
22700
22701     <div class="entry">
22702       <div class="title">
22703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
22704       </div>
22705       <div class="date">
22706         12th August 2009
22707       </div>
22708       <div class="body">
22709         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22710 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22711 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22712 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22713
22714 <table>
22715 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22716 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22717 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22718 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22719 </table>
22720
22721 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22722 got these numbers:</p>
22723
22724 <table>
22725 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22726 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22727 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22728 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22729 </table>
22730
22731 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22732
22733 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22734 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22735 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22736 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22737 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22738
22739
22740 <table>
22741 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22742 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22743 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22744 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22745 </table>
22746
22747 <p>And with 'site:no':
22748
22749 <table>
22750 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22751 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22752 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22753 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22754 </table>
22755
22756 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22757 numbers.</p>
22758
22759       </div>
22760       <div class="tags">
22761
22762
22763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22764
22765
22766       </div>
22767     </div>
22768     <div class="padding"></div>
22769
22770     <div class="entry">
22771       <div class="title">
22772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22773       </div>
22774       <div class="date">
22775          8th August 2009
22776       </div>
22777       <div class="body">
22778         <p>According to <a
22779 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22780 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22781 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22782 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22783 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22784 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22785 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22786 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22787 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22788 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22789
22790 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22791 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22792 seminar this autumn.</p>
22793
22794       </div>
22795       <div class="tags">
22796
22797
22798         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22799
22800
22801       </div>
22802     </div>
22803     <div class="padding"></div>
22804
22805     <div class="entry">
22806       <div class="title">
22807         <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>
22808       </div>
22809       <div class="date">
22810         27th July 2009
22811       </div>
22812       <div class="body">
22813         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22814 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22815 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22816 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22817 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22818 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22819 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22820
22821 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22822 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22823 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22824
22825       </div>
22826       <div class="tags">
22827
22828
22829         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>.
22830
22831
22832       </div>
22833     </div>
22834     <div class="padding"></div>
22835
22836     <div class="entry">
22837       <div class="title">
22838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22839       </div>
22840       <div class="date">
22841         22nd July 2009
22842       </div>
22843       <div class="body">
22844         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22845 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22846 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22847 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22848 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22849 the package up to date.</p>
22850
22851 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22852 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22853 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22854 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22855 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22856 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22857 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22858 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22859 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22860 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22861 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22862 working on the future release.</p>
22863
22864 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22865 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22866
22867       </div>
22868       <div class="tags">
22869
22870
22871         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>.
22872
22873
22874       </div>
22875     </div>
22876     <div class="padding"></div>
22877
22878     <div class="entry">
22879       <div class="title">
22880         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22881       </div>
22882       <div class="date">
22883         24th June 2009
22884       </div>
22885       <div class="body">
22886         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22887 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22888 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22889 funded
22890 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22891 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22892 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22893 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22894 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22895 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22896
22897 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22898 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22899 boot:</p>
22900
22901 <ul>
22902
22903 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22904
22905 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22906    clock is in UTC.</li>
22907
22908 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22909    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22910    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22911
22912 </ul>
22913
22914 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22915 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22916 Villegas</a>.
22917
22918 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22919 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22920 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22921 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22922 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22923 using this.</p>
22924
22925 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22926 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22927 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22928 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22929 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22930 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22931 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22932
22933       </div>
22934       <div class="tags">
22935
22936
22937         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>.
22938
22939
22940       </div>
22941     </div>
22942     <div class="padding"></div>
22943
22944     <div class="entry">
22945       <div class="title">
22946         <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>
22947       </div>
22948       <div class="date">
22949          2nd May 2009
22950       </div>
22951       <div class="body">
22952         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22953 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22954 do not yet know them.</p>
22955
22956 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22957 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22958 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22959 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22960 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22961 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22962 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
22963 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
22964 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
22965 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
22966 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
22967
22968 <p>The second one is
22969 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
22970 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
22971 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
22972 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
22973 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
22974 and the company behind it is running
22975 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
22976 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
22977 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
22978 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
22979 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
22980 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
22981 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
22982 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
22983
22984 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
22985 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
22986 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
22987 surrounded by today.</p>
22988
22989       </div>
22990       <div class="tags">
22991
22992
22993         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>.
22994
22995
22996       </div>
22997     </div>
22998     <div class="padding"></div>
22999
23000     <div class="entry">
23001       <div class="title">
23002         <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>
23003       </div>
23004       <div class="date">
23005         28th April 2009
23006       </div>
23007       <div class="body">
23008         <p>Julien Blache
23009 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
23010 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
23011 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
23012 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
23013 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
23014 properties.</p>
23015
23016       </div>
23017       <div class="tags">
23018
23019
23020         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>.
23021
23022
23023       </div>
23024     </div>
23025     <div class="padding"></div>
23026
23027     <div class="entry">
23028       <div class="title">
23029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
23030       </div>
23031       <div class="date">
23032          5th April 2009
23033       </div>
23034       <div class="body">
23035         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
23036 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
23037 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
23038 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
23039 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
23040 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
23041 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
23042 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
23043
23044 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
23045 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
23046 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23047   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23048   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23049
23050 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23051 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23052 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23053 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23054
23055 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23056 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23057 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23058 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23059
23060 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23061 set -e
23062 URL="$1"
23063 SAVEFILE="$2"
23064 DURATION="$3"
23065 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23066   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23067   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23068 pid=$!
23069 sleep $DURATION
23070 kill $pid
23071 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23072
23073       </div>
23074       <div class="tags">
23075
23076
23077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
23078
23079
23080       </div>
23081     </div>
23082     <div class="padding"></div>
23083
23084     <div class="entry">
23085       <div class="title">
23086         <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>
23087       </div>
23088       <div class="date">
23089         30th March 2009
23090       </div>
23091       <div class="body">
23092         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23093 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23094 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23095 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23096 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23097 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23098 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23099 application.</p>
23100
23101 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23102 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23103 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23104 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23105 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23106 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23107 blocked from doing so.</p>
23108
23109 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23110 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23111 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23112 requirements change.</p>
23113
23114 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23115 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23116 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23117
23118       </div>
23119       <div class="tags">
23120
23121
23122         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>.
23123
23124
23125       </div>
23126     </div>
23127     <div class="padding"></div>
23128
23129     <div class="entry">
23130       <div class="title">
23131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23132       </div>
23133       <div class="date">
23134         29th March 2009
23135       </div>
23136       <div class="body">
23137         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23138 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23139 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23140 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23141 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23142 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23143 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23144 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23145 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23146 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23147 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23148 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23149 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23150 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23151 now. :)</p>
23152
23153       </div>
23154       <div class="tags">
23155
23156
23157         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>.
23158
23159
23160       </div>
23161     </div>
23162     <div class="padding"></div>
23163
23164     <div class="entry">
23165       <div class="title">
23166         <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>
23167       </div>
23168       <div class="date">
23169         29th March 2009
23170       </div>
23171       <div class="body">
23172         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23173 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23174 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23175 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23176 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23177 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23178
23179 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23180 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23181 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23182 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23183 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23184 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23185 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23186 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23187 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23188 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23189 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23190 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23191 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23192
23193 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23194 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23195 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23196 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23197
23198 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23199 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23200
23201 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23202 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23203 new IETF work group?</p>
23204
23205       </div>
23206       <div class="tags">
23207
23208
23209         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>.
23210
23211
23212       </div>
23213     </div>
23214     <div class="padding"></div>
23215
23216     <div class="entry">
23217       <div class="title">
23218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
23219       </div>
23220       <div class="date">
23221         28th February 2009
23222       </div>
23223       <div class="body">
23224         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23225 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23226 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23227 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23228 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23229 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23230 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23231 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23232 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23233 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23234 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23235 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23236 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23237 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23238 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23239 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23240 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23241 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23242 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23243 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23244 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23245 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23246 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23247 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23248 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23249 machine.</p>
23250
23251 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23252 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23253 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23254 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23255 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23256 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23257 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23258
23259 <pre>
23260 use LWP::Simple;
23261 use POSIX;
23262 use WWW::Mechanize;
23263 use Date::Parse;
23264 [...]
23265 sub get_support_info {
23266     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23267     my $str;
23268
23269     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23270         # fetch website from Dell support
23271         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
23272         my $webpage = get($url);
23273         return undef unless ($webpage);
23274
23275         my $daysleft = -1;
23276         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23277         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23278             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23279             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23280             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23281
23282             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23283             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23284             my $lastend = "";
23285             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23286                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23287
23288                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23289                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23290                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23291                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23292                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23293                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23294                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23295             }
23296             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23297             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23298                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23299         }
23300     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23301         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23302         my $url =
23303             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23304         $mech->get($url);
23305         my $fields = {
23306             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23307             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23308             'country' => 'NO',
23309             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23310             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23311         };
23312         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23313                             fields      => $fields );
23314         # Next step is screen scraping
23315         my $content = $mech->content();
23316
23317         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23318         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23319         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23320         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23321
23322         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23323
23324         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23325             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23326                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23327             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23328             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23329                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23330             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23331                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23332
23333             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23334
23335             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23336                 if ($end lt $today);
23337         }
23338     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23339         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23340         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23341         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23342             my $content =
23343                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23344             if ($content) {
23345                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23346                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23347                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23348                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23349
23350                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23351                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23352
23353                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23354
23355                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23356                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23357                     if ($end lt $today);
23358             }
23359         }
23360     }
23361     return $str;
23362 }
23363 </pre>
23364
23365 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23366 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23367 from dmidecode.</p>
23368
23369 <pre>
23370 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23371                        "447707-B21");
23372 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23373 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23374                        "1234567");
23375 </pre>
23376
23377 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23378 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23379
23380 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23381 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23382 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23383 do so.</p>
23384
23385       </div>
23386       <div class="tags">
23387
23388
23389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23390
23391
23392       </div>
23393     </div>
23394     <div class="padding"></div>
23395
23396     <div class="entry">
23397       <div class="title">
23398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23399       </div>
23400       <div class="date">
23401         20th February 2009
23402       </div>
23403       <div class="body">
23404         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23405 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23406 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23407 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23408 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23409 the "missing" computer.</p>
23410
23411 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23412 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23413 code blocks as defined in the
23414 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23415 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23416 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23417 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23418 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23419 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23420 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23421 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23422 codes.</p>
23423
23424 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23425 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23426 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23427 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23428 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23429 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23430
23431 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23432 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23433 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23434 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23435 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23436 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23437 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23438 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23439 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23440 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23441
23442 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23443 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23444 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23445
23446       </div>
23447       <div class="tags">
23448
23449
23450         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23451
23452
23453       </div>
23454     </div>
23455     <div class="padding"></div>
23456
23457     <div class="entry">
23458       <div class="title">
23459         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
23460       </div>
23461       <div class="date">
23462         17th January 2009
23463       </div>
23464       <div class="body">
23465         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23466 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23467 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23468 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23469 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23470 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23471 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23472 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23473 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23474 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23475 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23476 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23477 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23478 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23479
23480 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23481 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23482 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23483 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23484 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23485 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23486 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23487 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23488 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23489 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23490 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23491 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23492 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23493 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23494 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23495 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23496 playing when the download is done.</p>
23497
23498 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23499 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23500 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23501 too.</p>
23502
23503 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23504 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23505 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23506 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23507
23508       </div>
23509       <div class="tags">
23510
23511
23512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23513
23514
23515       </div>
23516     </div>
23517     <div class="padding"></div>
23518
23519     <div class="entry">
23520       <div class="title">
23521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23522       </div>
23523       <div class="date">
23524         28th December 2008
23525       </div>
23526       <div class="body">
23527         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23528 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23529 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23530 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23531 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23532 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23533 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23534 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23535 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23536 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23537 source, sink and mixer applications and
23538 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23539 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23540 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23541 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23542 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23543 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23544 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23545 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23546 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23547
23548 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23549 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23550 larger stick as well.</p>
23551
23552       </div>
23553       <div class="tags">
23554
23555
23556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
23557
23558
23559       </div>
23560     </div>
23561     <div class="padding"></div>
23562
23563     <div class="entry">
23564       <div class="title">
23565         <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>
23566       </div>
23567       <div class="date">
23568          7th December 2008
23569       </div>
23570       <div class="body">
23571         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23572 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23573 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23574 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23575 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23576 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23577 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23578 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23579
23580 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23581 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23582 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23583 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23584 of these cards.</p>
23585
23586       </div>
23587       <div class="tags">
23588
23589
23590         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>.
23591
23592
23593       </div>
23594     </div>
23595     <div class="padding"></div>
23596
23597     <div class="entry">
23598       <div class="title">
23599         <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>
23600       </div>
23601       <div class="date">
23602         25th November 2008
23603       </div>
23604       <div class="body">
23605         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23606 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23607 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23608 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23609 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23610 notes are available on
23611 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23612 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23613 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23614 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23615 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23616 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23617 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23618 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23619 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23620
23621 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23622 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23623
23624       </div>
23625       <div class="tags">
23626
23627
23628         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>.
23629
23630
23631       </div>
23632     </div>
23633     <div class="padding"></div>
23634
23635     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
23636     <div id="sidebar">
23637
23638
23639
23640 <h2>Archive</h2>
23641 <ul>
23642
23643 <li>2015
23644 <ul>
23645
23646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23647
23648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23649
23650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23651
23652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23653
23654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23655
23656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23657
23658 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23659
23660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23661
23662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
23663
23664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (1)</a></li>
23665
23666 </ul></li>
23667
23668 <li>2014
23669 <ul>
23670
23671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23672
23673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23674
23675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23676
23677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23678
23679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23680
23681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23682
23683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23684
23685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23686
23687 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23688
23689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23690
23691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23692
23693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23694
23695 </ul></li>
23696
23697 <li>2013
23698 <ul>
23699
23700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23701
23702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23703
23704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23705
23706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23707
23708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23709
23710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23711
23712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23713
23714 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23715
23716 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23717
23718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23719
23720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23721
23722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23723
23724 </ul></li>
23725
23726 <li>2012
23727 <ul>
23728
23729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23730
23731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23732
23733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23734
23735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23736
23737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23738
23739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23740
23741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23742
23743 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23744
23745 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23746
23747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23748
23749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23750
23751 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23752
23753 </ul></li>
23754
23755 <li>2011
23756 <ul>
23757
23758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23759
23760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23761
23762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23763
23764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23765
23766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23767
23768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23769
23770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23771
23772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23773
23774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23775
23776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23777
23778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23779
23780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23781
23782 </ul></li>
23783
23784 <li>2010
23785 <ul>
23786
23787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23788
23789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23790
23791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23792
23793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23794
23795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23796
23797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23798
23799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23800
23801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23802
23803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23804
23805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23806
23807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23808
23809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23810
23811 </ul></li>
23812
23813 <li>2009
23814 <ul>
23815
23816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23817
23818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23819
23820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23821
23822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23823
23824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23825
23826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23827
23828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23829
23830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23831
23832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23833
23834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23835
23836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23837
23838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23839
23840 </ul></li>
23841
23842 <li>2008
23843 <ul>
23844
23845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23846
23847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23848
23849 </ul></li>
23850
23851 </ul>
23852
23853
23854
23855 <h2>Tags</h2>
23856 <ul>
23857
23858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23859
23860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23861
23862  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23863
23864  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23865
23866  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23867
23868  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23869
23870  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23871
23872  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23873
23874  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (112)</a></li>
23875
23876  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23877
23878  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23879
23880  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23881
23882  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (18)</a></li>
23883
23884  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23885
23886  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (289)</a></li>
23887
23888  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23889
23890  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23891
23892  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (20)</a></li>
23893
23894  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23895
23896  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23897
23898  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
23899
23900  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23901
23902  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23903
23904  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23905
23906  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23907
23908  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23909
23910  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23911
23912  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23913
23914  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23915
23916  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
23917
23918  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (264)</a></li>
23919
23920  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
23921
23922  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (19)</a></li>
23923
23924  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23925
23926  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (53)</a></li>
23927
23928  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
23929
23930  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23931
23932  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23933
23934  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23935
23936  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23937
23938  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23939
23940  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23941
23942  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23943
23944  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23945
23946  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
23947
23948  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23949
23950  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23951
23952  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
23953
23954  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23955
23956  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
23957
23958  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
23959
23960  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23961
23962  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
23963
23964  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
23965
23966  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
23967
23968  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
23969
23970  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
23971
23972 </ul>
23973
23974
23975     </div>
23976     <p style="text-align: right">
23977  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
23978 </p>
23979
23980   </body>
23981 </html>