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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          7th September 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>As I
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
  33 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
  34 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
  35 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
  36 repository for the project</a>.</p>
  37
  38 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
  39 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
  40 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
  41 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
  42
  43 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
  44 PostScript formats at
  45 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
  46 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
  47
  48       </div>
  49       <div class="tags">
  50
  51
  52         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>.
  53
  54
  55       </div>
  56     </div>
  57     <div class="padding"></div>
  58
  59     <div class="entry">
  60       <div class="title">
  61         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
  62       </div>
  63       <div class="date">
  64         16th August 2012
  65       </div>
  66       <div class="body">
  67         <p>I dag fyller
  68 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
  69 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
  70 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
  71
  72       </div>
  73       <div class="tags">
  74
  75
  76         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
  77
  78
  79       </div>
  80     </div>
  81     <div class="padding"></div>
  82
  83     <div class="entry">
  84       <div class="title">
  85         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
  86       </div>
  87       <div class="date">
  88         24th June 2012
  89       </div>
  90       <div class="body">
  91         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
  92 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
  93 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
  94 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
  95 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
  96 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
  97 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
  98 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
  99 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
 100 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
 101 missing in my book.</p>
 102
 103 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
 104 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
 105 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
 106 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
 107 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
 108 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
 109 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
 110
 111       </div>
 112       <div class="tags">
 113
 114
 115         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>.
 116
 117
 118       </div>
 119     </div>
 120     <div class="padding"></div>
 121
 122     <div class="entry">
 123       <div class="title">
 124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
 125       </div>
 126       <div class="date">
 127         21st November 2011
 128       </div>
 129       <div class="body">
 130         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
 131 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
 132 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
 133 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
 134 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
 135 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
 136 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
 137 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
 138 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
 139 the tools to do so.</p>
 140
 141 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
 142 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
 143 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
 144 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
 145
 146 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
 147 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
 148 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
 149 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
 150 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
 151 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
 152 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
 153 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
 154
 155 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
 156 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
 157 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
 158
 159 <p><pre>
 160 #!/usr/bin/perl
 161 use strict;
 162 use warnings;
 163 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
 164 BEGIN {
 165     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
 166     my %rhelmodules = (
 167         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
 168         );
 169     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
 170         eval "use $module;";
 171         if ($@) {
 172             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
 173             system("yum install -y $pkg");
 174             eval "use $module;";
 175         }
 176     }
 177 }
 178 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
 179
 180 upgrade_dell();
 181
 182 exit 0;
 183
 184 sub run_firmware_script {
 185     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
 186     unless ($script) {
 187         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
 188         exit 1
 189     }
 190     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
 191
 192     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
 193         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
 194     } else {
 195         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
 196     }
 197 }
 198
 199 sub run_firmware_scripts {
 200     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
 201     # Run firmware packages
 202     for my $dir (@dirs) {
 203         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
 204         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
 205         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
 206             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
 207             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
 208         }
 209         closedir $dh;
 210     }
 211 }
 212
 213 sub download {
 214     my $url = shift;
 215     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
 216     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
 217 }
 218
 219 sub upgrade_dell {
 220     my @dirs;
 221     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 222     chomp $product;
 223
 224     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
 225
 226         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
 227         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
 228
 229         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
 230             CLEANUP => 1
 231             );
 232         chdir($tmpdir);
 233         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
 234         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
 235         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
 236         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
 237         my $fwopts = "-q";
 238         if (@paths) {
 239             for my $url (@paths) {
 240                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
 241             }
 242             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
 243         } else {
 244             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 245             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 246         }
 247         chdir('/');
 248     } else {
 249         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 250         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 251     }
 252 }
 253
 254 sub fetch_dell_fw {
 255     my $path = shift;
 256     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
 257     download($url);
 258 }
 259
 260 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
 261 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
 262 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
 263 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
 264     my $filename = shift;
 265
 266     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 267     chomp $product;
 268     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
 269
 270     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
 271
 272     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
 273     my @paths;
 274     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
 275         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
 276         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
 277         my $oscode;
 278         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
 279             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
 280         } else {
 281             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
 282         }
 283         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
 284         {
 285             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
 286         }
 287     }
 288     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
 289         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
 290
 291         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
 292         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
 293
 294         my $cpath = $component->{path};
 295         for my $path (@paths) {
 296             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
 297                 push(@paths, $cpath);
 298             }
 299         }
 300     }
 301     return @paths;
 302 }
 303 </pre>
 304
 305 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
 306 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
 307 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
 308 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
 309 outdated.</p>
 310
 311       </div>
 312       <div class="tags">
 313
 314
 315         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>.
 316
 317
 318       </div>
 319     </div>
 320     <div class="padding"></div>
 321
 322     <div class="entry">
 323       <div class="title">
 324         <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>
 325       </div>
 326       <div class="date">
 327          4th August 2011
 328       </div>
 329       <div class="body">
 330         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
 331 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
 332 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
 333 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
 334 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
 335 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
 336 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
 337 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
 338 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
 339
 340 <p><blockquote>
 341 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
 342 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
 343 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
 344 </blockquote></p>
 345
 346 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
 347 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
 348 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
 349 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
 350 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
 351 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
 352 hard to explain.</p>
 353
 354 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
 355 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
 356 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
 357 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
 358 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
 359 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
 360 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
 361 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
 362 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
 363 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
 364 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
 365 mode).</p>
 366
 367 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
 368 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
 369 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
 370 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
 371 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
 372 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
 373 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
 374 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
 375 after visiting single user mode.</p>
 376
 377 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
 378 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
 379 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
 380 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
 381 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
 382 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
 383 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
 384 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
 385
 386 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
 387 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
 388 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
 389
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="tags">
 392
 393
 394         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>.
 395
 396
 397       </div>
 398     </div>
 399     <div class="padding"></div>
 400
 401     <div class="entry">
 402       <div class="title">
 403         <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>
 404       </div>
 405       <div class="date">
 406         30th July 2011
 407       </div>
 408       <div class="body">
 409         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
 410 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
 411 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
 412 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
 413 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
 414 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
 415 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
 416 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
 417 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
 418 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
 419 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
 420 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
 421 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
 422
 423 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
 424 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
 425 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
 426 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
 427 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
 428 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
 429 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
 430 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
 431 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
 432
 433 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
 434 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
 435 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
 436 is presented.</p>
 437
 438 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
 439 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
 440 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
 441 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
 442 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
 443 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
 444 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
 445 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
 446 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
 447 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
 448 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
 449 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
 450 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
 451 find time to push this forward.</p>
 452
 453       </div>
 454       <div class="tags">
 455
 456
 457         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>.
 458
 459
 460       </div>
 461     </div>
 462     <div class="padding"></div>
 463
 464     <div class="entry">
 465       <div class="title">
 466         <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>
 467       </div>
 468       <div class="date">
 469         29th July 2011
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="body">
 472         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
 473 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
 474 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
 475 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
 476 issues.</p>
 477
 478 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
 479 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
 480 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
 481
 482 <ol>
 483
 484 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
 485 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
 486 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
 487 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
 488 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
 489 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
 490 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
 491 Debian.</li>
 492
 493 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
 494 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
 495 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
 496 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
 497 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
 498 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
 499 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
 500 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
 501 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
 502 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
 503 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
 504 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
 505 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
 506
 507 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
 508 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
 509 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
 510 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
 511 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
 512 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
 513 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
 514 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
 515 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
 516 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
 517
 518 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
 519 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
 520 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
 521 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
 522 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
 523 latter behaviour.</li>
 524
 525 </ol>
 526
 527 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
 528 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
 529 it do not matter much.</p>
 530
 531 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
 532 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
 533 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
 534
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="tags">
 537
 538
 539         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 540
 541
 542       </div>
 543     </div>
 544     <div class="padding"></div>
 545
 546     <div class="entry">
 547       <div class="title">
 548         <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>
 549       </div>
 550       <div class="date">
 551         26th July 2011
 552       </div>
 553       <div class="body">
 554         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
 555 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
 556 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
 557 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
 558 security support for a few years.</p>
 559
 560 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
 561 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
 562 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
 563 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
 564 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
 565 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
 566 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
 567 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
 568 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
 569 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
 570 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
 571 easier in the future.</p>
 572
 573 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
 574 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
 575 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
 576 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
 577 do not have time for.</p>
 578
 579       </div>
 580       <div class="tags">
 581
 582
 583         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>.
 584
 585
 586       </div>
 587     </div>
 588     <div class="padding"></div>
 589
 590     <div class="entry">
 591       <div class="title">
 592         <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>
 593       </div>
 594       <div class="date">
 595          3rd April 2011
 596       </div>
 597       <div class="body">
 598         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
 599 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
 600 update in English.</p>
 601
 602 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
 603 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
 604 of the British service
 605 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
 606 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
 607 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
 608 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
 609 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
 610 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
 611 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
 612 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
 613 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
 614 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
 615 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
 616 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
 617 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
 618
 619 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
 620 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
 621 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
 622 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
 623 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
 624 public infrastructure.</p>
 625
 626 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
 627 such service?</p>
 628
 629       </div>
 630       <div class="tags">
 631
 632
 633         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>.
 634
 635
 636       </div>
 637     </div>
 638     <div class="padding"></div>
 639
 640     <div class="entry">
 641       <div class="title">
 642         <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>
 643       </div>
 644       <div class="date">
 645         28th January 2011
 646       </div>
 647       <div class="body">
 648         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
 649 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
 650 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
 651 available on the Internet, and check our locally
 652 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
 653 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
 654 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
 655 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
 656 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
 657 out which security holes were present in our free software
 658 collection.</p>
 659
 660 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
 661 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
 662 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
 663 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
 664 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
 665 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
 666 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
 667 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
 668 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
 669 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
 670 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
 671 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
 672 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
 673 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
 674 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
 675 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
 676
 677 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
 678 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
 679 check out, one could look up
 680 <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
 681 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
 682 The most recent one is
 683 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
 684 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
 685 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
 686
 687 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
 688 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
 689 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
 690 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
 691 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
 692 security issues out.</p>
 693
 694 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
 695 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
 696 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
 697 RHEL is providing
 698 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
 699 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
 700 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
 701
 702 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
 703 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
 704 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
 705 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
 706 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
 707 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
 708 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
 709 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
 710 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
 711 established soon.</p>
 712
 713 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
 714 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
 715 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
 716 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
 717 for their packages.</p>
 718
 719       </div>
 720       <div class="tags">
 721
 722
 723         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>.
 724
 725
 726       </div>
 727     </div>
 728     <div class="padding"></div>
 729
 730     <div class="entry">
 731       <div class="title">
 732         <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>
 733       </div>
 734       <div class="date">
 735         23rd January 2011
 736       </div>
 737       <div class="body">
 738         <p>In the
 739 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
 740 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
 741 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
 742 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
 743 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
 744 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
 745 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
 746 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
 747 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
 748 one of my machines like this:</p>
 749
 750 <pre>
 751 loaded modules:
 752 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
 753 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
 754 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
 755 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
 756 10de:03ec pata_amd
 757 10de:03f6 sata_nv
 758 1022:1103 k8temp
 759 109e:036e bttv
 760 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
 761 11ab:4364 sky2
 762 </pre>
 763
 764 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
 765 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
 766
 767 <pre>
 768 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
 769     echo loaded pci modules:
 770     (
 771         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
 772         for address in * ; do
 773             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
 774                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
 775                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
 776                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
 777                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
 778                     echo "$id $module"
 779                 fi
 780             fi
 781         done
 782     )
 783     echo
 784 fi
 785 </pre>
 786
 787 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
 788 mappings:</p>
 789
 790 <pre>
 791 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
 792     echo loaded usb modules:
 793     (
 794         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
 795         for address in * ; do
 796             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
 797                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
 798                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
 799                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
 800                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
 801                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
 802                         echo "$id $module"
 803                     fi
 804                 fi
 805             fi
 806         done
 807     )
 808     echo
 809 fi
 810 </pre>
 811
 812 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
 813 well.</p>
 814
 815       </div>
 816       <div class="tags">
 817
 818
 819         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>.
 820
 821
 822       </div>
 823     </div>
 824     <div class="padding"></div>
 825
 826     <div class="entry">
 827       <div class="title">
 828         <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>
 829       </div>
 830       <div class="date">
 831         22nd December 2010
 832       </div>
 833       <div class="body">
 834         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
 835 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
 836 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
 837 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
 838 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
 839 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
 840 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
 841 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
 842 university.</p>
 843
 844 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
 845 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
 846 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
 847 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
 848 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
 849 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
 850 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
 851 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
 852
 853 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
 854 I perform on a new model.</p>
 855
 856 <ul>
 857
 858 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
 859 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
 860 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
 861
 862 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
 863 installation, X.org is working.</li>
 864
 865 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
 866 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
 867 reported by the program.</li>
 868
 869 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
 870 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
 871 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
 872 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
 873 normally test this by playing
 874 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
 875 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
 876
 877 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
 878 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
 879
 880 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
 881 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
 882
 883 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
 884 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
 885
 886 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
 887 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
 888 few.</li>
 889
 890 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
 891 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
 892 notice this.</li>
 893
 894 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
 895 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
 896 resume.</li>
 897
 898 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
 899 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
 900 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
 901 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
 902 not.</li>
 903
 904 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
 905 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
 906 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
 907 existence.</li>
 908
 909 </ul>
 910
 911 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
 912 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
 913 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
 914 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
 915 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
 916 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
 917 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
 918 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
 919
 920       </div>
 921       <div class="tags">
 922
 923
 924         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>.
 925
 926
 927       </div>
 928     </div>
 929     <div class="padding"></div>
 930
 931     <div class="entry">
 932       <div class="title">
 933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
 934       </div>
 935       <div class="date">
 936         11th December 2010
 937       </div>
 938       <div class="body">
 939         <p>As I continue to explore
 940 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
 941 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
 942 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
 943
 944 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
 945 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
 946 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
 947 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
 948 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
 949 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
 950 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
 951 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
 952 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
 953 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
 954 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
 955 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
 956 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
 957 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
 958 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
 959 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
 960 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
 961 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
 962 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
 963 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
 964
 965 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
 966 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
 967 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
 968 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
 969 If the Skolelinux foundation
 970 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
 971 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
 972 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
 973 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
 974 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
 975 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
 976 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
 977 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
 978
 979 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
 980 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
 981 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
 982 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
 983 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
 984 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
 985 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
 986 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
 987 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
 988 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
 989 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
 990 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
 991 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
 992 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
 993 currencies.</p>
 994
 995 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
 996 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
 997 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
 998 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
 999 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
1000 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
1001 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
1002 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
1003 BitCoins.  Check out
1004 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
1005 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
1006 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
1007 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
1008 yet.</p>
1009
1010 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
1011 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
1012 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
1013 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
1014 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
1015
1016       </div>
1017       <div class="tags">
1018
1019
1020         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>.
1021
1022
1023       </div>
1024     </div>
1025     <div class="padding"></div>
1026
1027     <div class="entry">
1028       <div class="title">
1029         <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>
1030       </div>
1031       <div class="date">
1032         10th December 2010
1033       </div>
1034       <div class="body">
1035         <p>With this weeks lawless
1036 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
1037 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
1038 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
1039 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
1040 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
1041 A blog post from
1042 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
1043 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
1044 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
1045 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
1046 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
1047 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
1048 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
1049
1050 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
1051 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
1052 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
1053 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
1054 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
1055 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
1056 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
1057 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
1058 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
1059 Debian</a> soon.</p>
1060
1061 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
1062 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
1063 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
1064 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
1065 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
1066 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
1067 you can even get
1068 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
1069 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
1070 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
1071 on the current exchange rates.</p>
1072
1073 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
1074 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
1075 donations to the address
1076 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
1077
1078       </div>
1079       <div class="tags">
1080
1081
1082         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>.
1083
1084
1085       </div>
1086     </div>
1087     <div class="padding"></div>
1088
1089     <div class="entry">
1090       <div class="title">
1091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
1092       </div>
1093       <div class="date">
1094         27th November 2010
1095       </div>
1096       <div class="body">
1097         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
1098 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
1099 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
1100 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
1101 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
1102 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
1103 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
1104 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
1105
1106 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
1107 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
1108 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
1109 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
1110 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
1111 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
1112 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
1113 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
1114 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
1115 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
1116 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
1117
1118 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
1119 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
1120 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
1121 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
1122 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
1123 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
1124 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
1125 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
1126 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
1127 what is going on.</p>
1128
1129       </div>
1130       <div class="tags">
1131
1132
1133         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>.
1134
1135
1136       </div>
1137     </div>
1138     <div class="padding"></div>
1139
1140     <div class="entry">
1141       <div class="title">
1142         <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>
1143       </div>
1144       <div class="date">
1145         22nd November 2010
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="body">
1148         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
1149 upgrade testing of the
1150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1151 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
1152 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
1153 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
1154
1155 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1156
1157 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1158
1159 <blockquote><p>
1160   apache2.2-bin
1161   aptdaemon
1162   baobab
1163   binfmt-support
1164   browser-plugin-gnash
1165   cheese-common
1166   cli-common
1167   cups-pk-helper
1168   dmz-cursor-theme
1169   empathy
1170   empathy-common
1171   freedesktop-sound-theme
1172   freeglut3
1173   gconf-defaults-service
1174   gdm-themes
1175   gedit-plugins
1176   geoclue
1177   geoclue-hostip
1178   geoclue-localnet
1179   geoclue-manual
1180   geoclue-yahoo
1181   gnash
1182   gnash-common
1183   gnome
1184   gnome-backgrounds
1185   gnome-cards-data
1186   gnome-codec-install
1187   gnome-core
1188   gnome-desktop-environment
1189   gnome-disk-utility
1190   gnome-screenshot
1191   gnome-search-tool
1192   gnome-session-canberra
1193   gnome-system-log
1194   gnome-themes-extras
1195   gnome-themes-more
1196   gnome-user-share
1197   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1198   gstreamer0.10-tools
1199   gtk2-engines
1200   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1201   gtk2-engines-smooth
1202   hamster-applet
1203   libapache2-mod-dnssd
1204   libapr1
1205   libaprutil1
1206   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
1207   libaprutil1-ldap
1208   libart2.0-cil
1209   libboost-date-time1.42.0
1210   libboost-python1.42.0
1211   libboost-thread1.42.0
1212   libchamplain-0.4-0
1213   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
1214   libcheese-gtk18
1215   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1216   libcryptui0
1217   libdiscid0
1218   libelf1
1219   libepc-1.0-2
1220   libepc-common
1221   libepc-ui-1.0-2
1222   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1223   libfreerdp0
1224   libgconf2.0-cil
1225   libgdata-common
1226   libgdata7
1227   libgdu-gtk0
1228   libgee2
1229   libgeoclue0
1230   libgexiv2-0
1231   libgif4
1232   libglade2.0-cil
1233   libglib2.0-cil
1234   libgmime2.4-cil
1235   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1236   libgnome2.24-cil
1237   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
1238   libgpod-common
1239   libgpod4
1240   libgtk2.0-cil
1241   libgtkglext1
1242   libgtksourceview2.0-common
1243   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1244   libmono-addins0.2-cil
1245   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
1246   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1247   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
1248   libmono-posix2.0-cil
1249   libmono-security2.0-cil
1250   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1251   libmono-system2.0-cil
1252   libmtp8
1253   libmusicbrainz3-6
1254   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
1255   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
1256   libopal3.6.8
1257   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
1258   libpt2.6.7
1259   libpython2.6
1260   librpm1
1261   librpmio1
1262   libsdl1.2debian
1263   libsrtp0
1264   libssh-4
1265   libtelepathy-farsight0
1266   libtelepathy-glib0
1267   libtidy-0.99-0
1268   media-player-info
1269   mesa-utils
1270   mono-2.0-gac
1271   mono-gac
1272   mono-runtime
1273   nautilus-sendto
1274   nautilus-sendto-empathy
1275   p7zip-full
1276   pkg-config
1277   python-aptdaemon
1278   python-aptdaemon-gtk
1279   python-axiom
1280   python-beautifulsoup
1281   python-bugbuddy
1282   python-clientform
1283   python-coherence
1284   python-configobj
1285   python-crypto
1286   python-cupshelpers
1287   python-elementtree
1288   python-epsilon
1289   python-evolution
1290   python-feedparser
1291   python-gdata
1292   python-gdbm
1293   python-gst0.10
1294   python-gtkglext1
1295   python-gtksourceview2
1296   python-httplib2
1297   python-louie
1298   python-mako
1299   python-markupsafe
1300   python-mechanize
1301   python-nevow
1302   python-notify
1303   python-opengl
1304   python-openssl
1305   python-pam
1306   python-pkg-resources
1307   python-pyasn1
1308   python-pysqlite2
1309   python-rdflib
1310   python-serial
1311   python-tagpy
1312   python-twisted-bin
1313   python-twisted-conch
1314   python-twisted-core
1315   python-twisted-web
1316   python-utidylib
1317   python-webkit
1318   python-xdg
1319   python-zope.interface
1320   remmina
1321   remmina-plugin-data
1322   remmina-plugin-rdp
1323   remmina-plugin-vnc
1324   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
1325   rhythmbox-plugins
1326   rpm-common
1327   rpm2cpio
1328   seahorse-plugins
1329   shotwell
1330   software-center
1331   system-config-printer-udev
1332   telepathy-gabble
1333   telepathy-mission-control-5
1334   telepathy-salut
1335   tomboy
1336   totem
1337   totem-coherence
1338   totem-mozilla
1339   totem-plugins
1340   transmission-common
1341   xdg-user-dirs
1342   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
1343   xserver-xephyr
1344 </p></blockquote>
1345
1346 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1347
1348 <blockquote><p>
1349   cheese
1350   ekiga
1351   eog
1352   epiphany-extensions
1353   evolution-exchange
1354   fast-user-switch-applet
1355   file-roller
1356   gcalctool
1357   gconf-editor
1358   gdm
1359   gedit
1360   gedit-common
1361   gnome-games
1362   gnome-games-data
1363   gnome-nettool
1364   gnome-system-tools
1365   gnome-themes
1366   gnuchess
1367   gucharmap
1368   guile-1.8-libs
1369   libavahi-ui0
1370   libdmx1
1371   libgalago3
1372   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
1373   libgtksourceview2.0-0
1374   liblircclient0
1375   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
1376   libspeexdsp1
1377   libsvga1
1378   rhythmbox
1379   seahorse
1380   sound-juicer
1381   system-config-printer
1382   totem-common
1383   transmission-gtk
1384   vinagre
1385   vino
1386 </p></blockquote>
1387
1388 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1389
1390 <blockquote><p>
1391   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1392 </p></blockquote>
1393
1394 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1395
1396 <blockquote><p>
1397 [nothing]
1398 </p></blockquote>
1399
1400 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
1401
1402 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1403
1404 <blockquote><p>
1405   ksmserver
1406 </p></blockquote>
1407
1408 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1409
1410 <blockquote><p>
1411   kwin
1412   network-manager-kde
1413 </p></blockquote>
1414
1415 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1416
1417 <blockquote><p>
1418   arts
1419   dolphin
1420   freespacenotifier
1421   google-gadgets-gst
1422   google-gadgets-xul
1423   kappfinder
1424   kcalc
1425   kcharselect
1426   kde-core
1427   kde-plasma-desktop
1428   kde-standard
1429   kde-window-manager
1430   kdeartwork
1431   kdeartwork-emoticons
1432   kdeartwork-style
1433   kdeartwork-theme-icon
1434   kdebase
1435   kdebase-apps
1436   kdebase-workspace
1437   kdebase-workspace-bin
1438   kdebase-workspace-data
1439   kdeeject
1440   kdelibs
1441   kdeplasma-addons
1442   kdeutils
1443   kdewallpapers
1444   kdf
1445   kfloppy
1446   kgpg
1447   khelpcenter4
1448   kinfocenter
1449   konq-plugins-l10n
1450   konqueror-nsplugins
1451   kscreensaver
1452   kscreensaver-xsavers
1453   ktimer
1454   kwrite
1455   libgle3
1456   libkde4-ruby1.8
1457   libkonq5
1458   libkonq5-templates
1459   libnetpbm10
1460   libplasma-ruby
1461   libplasma-ruby1.8
1462   libqt4-ruby1.8
1463   marble-data
1464   marble-plugins
1465   netpbm
1466   nuvola-icon-theme
1467   plasma-dataengines-workspace
1468   plasma-desktop
1469   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
1470   plasma-runners-addons
1471   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
1472   plasma-scriptengine-python
1473   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
1474   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
1475   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
1476   plasma-scriptengines
1477   plasma-wallpapers-addons
1478   plasma-widget-folderview
1479   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
1480   ruby
1481   sweeper
1482   update-notifier-kde
1483   xscreensaver-data-extra
1484   xscreensaver-gl
1485   xscreensaver-gl-extra
1486   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
1487 </p></blockquote>
1488
1489 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1490
1491 <blockquote><p>
1492   ark
1493   google-gadgets-common
1494   google-gadgets-qt
1495   htdig
1496   kate
1497   kdebase-bin
1498   kdebase-data
1499   kdepasswd
1500   kfind
1501   klipper
1502   konq-plugins
1503   konqueror
1504   ksysguard
1505   ksysguardd
1506   libarchive1
1507   libcln6
1508   libeet1
1509   libeina-svn-06
1510   libggadget-1.0-0b
1511   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
1512   libgps19
1513   libkdecorations4
1514   libkephal4
1515   libkonq4
1516   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
1517   libkscreensaver5
1518   libksgrd4
1519   libksignalplotter4
1520   libkunitconversion4
1521   libkwineffects1a
1522   libmarblewidget4
1523   libntrack-qt4-1
1524   libntrack0
1525   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
1526   libplasmaclock4a
1527   libplasmagenericshell4
1528   libprocesscore4a
1529   libprocessui4a
1530   libqalculate5
1531   libqedje0a
1532   libqtruby4shared2
1533   libqzion0a
1534   libruby1.8
1535   libscim8c2a
1536   libsmokekdecore4-3
1537   libsmokekdeui4-3
1538   libsmokekfile3
1539   libsmokekhtml3
1540   libsmokekio3
1541   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
1542   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
1543   libsmokekparts3
1544   libsmokektexteditor3
1545   libsmokekutils3
1546   libsmokenepomuk3
1547   libsmokephonon3
1548   libsmokeplasma3
1549   libsmokeqtcore4-3
1550   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
1551   libsmokeqtgui4-3
1552   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
1553   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
1554   libsmokeqtscript4-3
1555   libsmokeqtsql4-3
1556   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
1557   libsmokeqttest4-3
1558   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
1559   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
1560   libsmokeqtxml4-3
1561   libsmokesolid3
1562   libsmokesoprano3
1563   libtaskmanager4a
1564   libtidy-0.99-0
1565   libweather-ion4a
1566   libxklavier16
1567   libxxf86misc1
1568   okteta
1569   oxygencursors
1570   plasma-dataengines-addons
1571   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
1572   plasma-widget-lancelot
1573   plasma-widgets-addons
1574   plasma-widgets-workspace
1575   polkit-kde-1
1576   ruby1.8
1577   systemsettings
1578   update-notifier-common
1579 </p></blockquote>
1580
1581 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
1582 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
1583 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
1584 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
1585
1586       </div>
1587       <div class="tags">
1588
1589
1590         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>.
1591
1592
1593       </div>
1594     </div>
1595     <div class="padding"></div>
1596
1597     <div class="entry">
1598       <div class="title">
1599         <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>
1600       </div>
1601       <div class="date">
1602         22nd November 2010
1603       </div>
1604       <div class="body">
1605         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
1606 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
1607 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
1608 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
1609 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
1610 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
1611 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
1612 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
1613 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
1614
1615 <p>I found
1616 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
1617 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
1618 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
1619 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
1620 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
1621 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
1622
1623 <pre>
1624 #!/bin/sh
1625
1626 # Based on
1627 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
1628
1629 set -e
1630 set -x
1631
1632 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
1633     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
1634     exit 1
1635 else
1636     host="$1"
1637 fi
1638
1639 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
1640     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
1641     exit 1
1642 fi
1643
1644 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
1645 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1646 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1647 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
1648
1649 img=$host.img
1650 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
1651 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
1652
1653 parted $img mklabel msdos
1654 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
1655 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
1656 parted $img set 1 boot on
1657
1658 modprobe dm-mod
1659 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
1660 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
1661
1662 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
1663 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
1664 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
1665
1666 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
1667 losetup -d /dev/loop0
1668 </pre>
1669
1670 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
1671 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
1672
1673 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
1674 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
1675 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
1676 seem to work just fine.</p>
1677
1678       </div>
1679       <div class="tags">
1680
1681
1682         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>.
1683
1684
1685       </div>
1686     </div>
1687     <div class="padding"></div>
1688
1689     <div class="entry">
1690       <div class="title">
1691         <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>
1692       </div>
1693       <div class="date">
1694         20th November 2010
1695       </div>
1696       <div class="body">
1697         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
1698 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1699 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
1700 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
1701
1702 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
1703 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
1704 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
1705
1706 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1707
1708 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1709
1710 <blockquote><p>
1711   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
1712   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
1713   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
1714   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
1715   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
1716   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
1717   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
1718   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
1719   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
1720   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
1721   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1722   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1723   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
1724   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
1725   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
1726   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
1727   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1728   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
1729   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1730   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
1731   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
1732   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1733   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
1734   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
1735   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
1736   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1737   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1738   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
1739   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1740   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
1741   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
1742   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
1743   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
1744   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
1745   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
1746   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
1747   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
1748   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
1749   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
1750   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
1751   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
1752   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
1753   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
1754   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
1755   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
1756   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
1757   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
1758   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
1759   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
1760   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
1761   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
1762   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
1763   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
1764   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
1765   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
1766   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
1767   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
1768   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
1769   zip
1770 </p></blockquote>
1771
1772 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
1773
1774 <blockquote><p>
1775   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
1776   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
1777   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
1778   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
1779   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
1780   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
1781   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
1782   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
1783   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
1784   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
1785   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
1786   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
1787   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
1788   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1789   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
1790   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
1791   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
1792   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
1793   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
1794   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
1795   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
1796   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
1797   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
1798   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
1799   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
1800   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
1801   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
1802   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
1803   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
1804 </p></blockquote>
1805
1806 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1807
1808 <blockquote><p>
1809   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1810 </p></blockquote>
1811
1812 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1813
1814 <blockquote><p>
1815 [nothing]
1816 </p></blockquote>
1817
1818 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
1819
1820 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1821
1822 <blockquote><p>
1823   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
1824   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
1825   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
1826   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
1827   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
1828   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
1829   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
1830   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
1831   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
1832   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
1833   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
1834   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
1835   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
1836   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
1837   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
1838   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
1839   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
1840   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
1841   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
1842   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
1843   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
1844   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
1845   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
1846   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
1847   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
1848   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
1849   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
1850   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
1851   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
1852   ttf-sazanami-gothic
1853 </p></blockquote>
1854
1855 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1856
1857 <blockquote><p>
1858   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
1859   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
1860   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
1861   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
1862   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
1863   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
1864   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
1865   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
1866   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
1867   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
1868   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
1869   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
1870   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
1871   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
1872   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
1873   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
1874   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
1875   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
1876   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
1877   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
1878   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
1879   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
1880   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
1881   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
1882   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
1883   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
1884   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
1885   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
1886   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
1887   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
1888   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
1889   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
1890   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
1891 </p></blockquote>
1892
1893 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1894
1895 <blockquote><p>
1896   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
1897   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
1898   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
1899   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
1900   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
1901   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
1902   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
1903 </p></blockquote>
1904
1905 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1906
1907 <blockquote><p>
1908   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
1909 </p></blockquote>
1910
1911       </div>
1912       <div class="tags">
1913
1914
1915         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1916
1917
1918       </div>
1919     </div>
1920     <div class="padding"></div>
1921
1922     <div class="entry">
1923       <div class="title">
1924         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
1925       </div>
1926       <div class="date">
1927         20th November 2010
1928       </div>
1929       <div class="body">
1930         <p>Answering
1931 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
1932 call from the Gnash project</a> for
1933 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
1934 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
1935 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
1936 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
1937 releases out more often.</p>
1938
1939 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
1940 I have considered setting up a <a
1941 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
1942 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
1943 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
1944 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
1945 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
1946 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
1947 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
1948 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
1949 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
1950 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
1951 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
1952 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
1953
1954       </div>
1955       <div class="tags">
1956
1957
1958         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>.
1959
1960
1961       </div>
1962     </div>
1963     <div class="padding"></div>
1964
1965     <div class="entry">
1966       <div class="title">
1967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
1968       </div>
1969       <div class="date">
1970          9th November 2010
1971       </div>
1972       <div class="body">
1973         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
1974
1975 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
1976 3D linked in from
1977 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
1978 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
1979
1980       </div>
1981       <div class="tags">
1982
1983
1984         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>.
1985
1986
1987       </div>
1988     </div>
1989     <div class="padding"></div>
1990
1991     <div class="entry">
1992       <div class="title">
1993         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
1994       </div>
1995       <div class="date">
1996         24th October 2010
1997       </div>
1998       <div class="body">
1999         <p>Some updates.</p>
2000
2001 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
2002 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
2003 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
2004 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
2005 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
2006 :)</p>
2007
2008 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
2009 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
2010 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
2011 It is called
2012 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
2013 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
2014 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
2015 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
2016 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
2017 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
2018
2019 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
2020 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
2021 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
2022 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
2023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
2024 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
2025 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
2026 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
2027 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
2028 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
2029
2030       </div>
2031       <div class="tags">
2032
2033
2034         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>.
2035
2036
2037       </div>
2038     </div>
2039     <div class="padding"></div>
2040
2041     <div class="entry">
2042       <div class="title">
2043         <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>
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="date">
2046          4th September 2010
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="body">
2049         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
2050 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
2051 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
2052 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
2053 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
2054 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
2055 installed.</p>
2056
2057 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
2058 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
2059 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2060 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
2061 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2062 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
2063 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2064 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2065 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
2066
2067 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2068 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2069 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
2070 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2071 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2072 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2073 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2074 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2075 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2076 pages they want to visit.</p>
2077
2078 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2079 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2080 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2081 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2082 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2083 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2084 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2085 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2086 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
2087 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2088 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
2089
2090       </div>
2091       <div class="tags">
2092
2093
2094         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>.
2095
2096
2097       </div>
2098     </div>
2099     <div class="padding"></div>
2100
2101     <div class="entry">
2102       <div class="title">
2103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
2104       </div>
2105       <div class="date">
2106         27th July 2010
2107       </div>
2108       <div class="body">
2109         <p>I discovered this while doing
2110 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
2111 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
2112 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2113 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2114 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
2115
2116 <p>An example is from todays
2117 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
2118 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2119 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
2120 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2121 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2122 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2123 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
2124
2125 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
2126
2127 <blockquote><pre>
2128 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2129  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
2130   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2131 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2132  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2133 </pre></blockquote>
2134
2135 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2136 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
2137 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2138 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2139 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2140 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2141 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2142 of dependency loops.</p>
2143
2144 <p>Thanks to
2145 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
2146 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
2147 dependencies
2148 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
2149 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
2150
2151 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
2153 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
2154 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2155 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2156 it.</p>
2157
2158       </div>
2159       <div class="tags">
2160
2161
2162         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>.
2163
2164
2165       </div>
2166     </div>
2167     <div class="padding"></div>
2168
2169     <div class="entry">
2170       <div class="title">
2171         <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>
2172       </div>
2173       <div class="date">
2174         17th July 2010
2175       </div>
2176       <div class="body">
2177         <p>This is a
2178 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
2179 on my
2180 <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
2181 work</a> on
2182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
2183 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
2184
2185 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
2186 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
2187 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
2188 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
2189
2190 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
2191 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
2192 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
2193
2194 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
2195
2196 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
2197 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
2198 the web.
2199
2200 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
2201 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
2202 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
2203 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
2204 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
2205 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
2206
2207 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
2208 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
2209 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
2210 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
2211 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
2212 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
2213 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
2214 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
2215 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
2216 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
2217 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
2218 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
2219 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
2220 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
2221 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
2222 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
2223
2224 <blockquote><pre>
2225 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2226   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2227   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2228   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2229   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2230   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2231   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2232
2233 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2234   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2235   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
2236   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
2237   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
2238   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
2239 </pre></blockquote>
2240
2241 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
2242 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
2243 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
2244 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2245 also exist.</p>
2246
2247 <blockquote><pre>
2248 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2249 objectclass: top
2250 objectclass: dnsdomain
2251 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2252 dc: tjener
2253 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2254 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2255
2256 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2257 objectclass: top
2258 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2259 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2260 dc: 2
2261 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2262 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2263 </pre></blockquote>
2264
2265 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
2266 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
2267 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2268 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2269 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2270 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2271 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
2272 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
2273 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2274 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2275 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2276 instead.</p>
2277
2278 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2279 like this:</p>
2280
2281 <blockquote><pre>
2282 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2283   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2284   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2285   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2286   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2287   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2288
2289 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2290   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2291 </pre></blockquote>
2292
2293 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2294 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2295 reverse lookups.</p>
2296
2297 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2298 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2299 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
2300 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
2301
2302 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2303 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
2304 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
2305
2306 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2307 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2308 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
2309 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2310 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
2311
2312 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2313 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2314 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2315 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
2316 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
2317
2318 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
2319 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
2320 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
2321 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
2322 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
2323 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
2324
2325 <blockquote><pre>
2326 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
2327     SUP top
2328     AUXILIARY
2329     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
2330           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
2331           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
2332           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
2333           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
2334     ))
2335 </pre></blockquote>
2336
2337 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
2338 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
2339 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
2340 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
2341 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
2342 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
2343
2344 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
2345
2346 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
2347 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
2348 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
2349 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
2350 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
2351
2352 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
2353 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
2354 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
2355 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
2356
2357 <blockquote><pre>
2358 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
2359 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
2360 </pre></blockquote>
2361
2362 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
2363 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
2364 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
2365 search result is this entry:</p>
2366
2367 <blockquote><pre>
2368 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2369 cn: dhcp
2370 objectClass: top
2371 objectClass: dhcpServer
2372 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2373 </pre></blockquote>
2374
2375 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
2376 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
2377 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
2378 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
2379 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
2380 The search result is this entry:</p>
2381
2382 <blockquote><pre>
2383 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2384 cn: DHCP Config
2385 objectClass: top
2386 objectClass: dhcpService
2387 objectClass: dhcpOptions
2388 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2389 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
2390 dhcpStatements: authoritative
2391 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
2392 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
2393 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
2394 </pre></blockquote>
2395
2396 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
2397 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
2398 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
2399 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
2400 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
2401 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
2402 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
2403 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
2404 related computer objects.</p>
2405
2406 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
2407 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
2408 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
2409 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
2410 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
2411 like:</p>
2412
2413 <blockquote><pre>
2414 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2415 cn: hostname
2416 objectClass: top
2417 objectClass: dhcpHost
2418 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2419 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
2420 </pre></blockquote>
2421
2422 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
2423 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
2424 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
2425 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
2426 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
2427 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
2428 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
2429 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
2430 structural object class.
2431
2432 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
2433
2434 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
2435 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
2436 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
2437 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
2438 in the configuration.</p>
2439
2440 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
2441 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
2442 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
2443 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
2444 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
2445 structure.</p>
2446
2447 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
2448 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
2449
2450 <blockquote><pre>
2451 ou=services
2452   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
2453     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
2454     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2455       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2456         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2457     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2458       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2459         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2460     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
2461       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
2462 </pre></blockquote>
2463
2464 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
2465 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
2466 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
2467 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
2468
2469 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
2470 like this:</p>
2471
2472 <blockquote><pre>
2473 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2474 dc: hostname
2475 objectClass: top
2476 objectClass: dhcpHost
2477 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2478 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
2479 associateddomain: hostname.intern
2480 arecord: 10.11.12.13
2481 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2482 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
2483 </pre></blockquote>
2484
2485 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
2486 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
2487 auxiliary object class.</p>
2488
2489       </div>
2490       <div class="tags">
2491
2492
2493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2494
2495
2496       </div>
2497     </div>
2498     <div class="padding"></div>
2499
2500     <div class="entry">
2501       <div class="title">
2502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
2503       </div>
2504       <div class="date">
2505         14th July 2010
2506       </div>
2507       <div class="body">
2508         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
2509 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
2510 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
2511 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
2512 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
2513
2514 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
2515 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
2516
2517 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
2518 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
2519 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
2520 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
2521 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
2522 to a slave DNS server.</p>
2523
2524 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
2525 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
2526 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
2527 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
2528 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
2529 seem to work.</p>
2530
2531 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
2532 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
2533 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
2534 this:</p>
2535
2536 <blockquote><pre>
2537   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2538   cn: hostname
2539   objectClass: dhcphost
2540   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2541   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
2542   associateddomain: hostname.intern
2543   arecord: 10.11.12.13
2544   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2545   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
2546   ldapconfigsound: Y
2547 </pre></blockquote>
2548
2549 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
2550 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
2551 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
2552 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
2553
2554 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
2555 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
2556 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
2557 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
2558 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
2559 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
2560 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
2561 might be a good place to put it.</p>
2562
2563 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2564 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2565
2566       </div>
2567       <div class="tags">
2568
2569
2570         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>.
2571
2572
2573       </div>
2574     </div>
2575     <div class="padding"></div>
2576
2577     <div class="entry">
2578       <div class="title">
2579         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
2580       </div>
2581       <div class="date">
2582         11th July 2010
2583       </div>
2584       <div class="body">
2585         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
2586 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
2587 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
2588 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
2589
2590 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
2591 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
2592 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
2593 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
2594 LTSP clients.</p>
2595
2596 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
2597 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
2598 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
2599
2600 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
2601 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
2602 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
2603
2604 <blockquote><pre>
2605 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
2606 #
2607 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
2608 #
2609 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
2610 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
2611 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
2612 #
2613 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
2614 # existence of attribute names.
2615 #
2616 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
2617 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
2618 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
2619 #
2620 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
2621 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
2622 #
2623 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
2624 #     SUP top
2625 #     AUXILIARY
2626 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
2627
2628 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
2629 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
2630     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
2631     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
2632         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
2633         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
2634             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
2635             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
2636             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
2637             # bass value on to clients
2638             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
2639         done
2640     done
2641 fi
2642 </pre></blockquote>
2643
2644 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
2645 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
2646 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
2647 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
2648 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
2649
2650 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2651 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2652
2653 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
2654 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
2655 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
2656 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
2657 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
2658 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
2659
2660       </div>
2661       <div class="tags">
2662
2663
2664         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>.
2665
2666
2667       </div>
2668     </div>
2669     <div class="padding"></div>
2670
2671     <div class="entry">
2672       <div class="title">
2673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2674       </div>
2675       <div class="date">
2676          9th July 2010
2677       </div>
2678       <div class="body">
2679         <p>Since
2680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
2681 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
2682 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
2683 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
2684 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
2685 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
2686 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
2687 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
2688 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
2689 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
2690 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
2691 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
2692 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
2693
2694       </div>
2695       <div class="tags">
2696
2697
2698         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>.
2699
2700
2701       </div>
2702     </div>
2703     <div class="padding"></div>
2704
2705     <div class="entry">
2706       <div class="title">
2707         <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>
2708       </div>
2709       <div class="date">
2710          3rd July 2010
2711       </div>
2712       <div class="body">
2713         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
2714 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
2715 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
2716 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
2717 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
2718 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
2719 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
2720 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
2721
2722 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
2723 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
2724 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
2725 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
2726 publish the difference.</p>
2727
2728 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2729
2730 <blockquote><p>
2731   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2732   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
2733   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
2734   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2735   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
2736   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
2737   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
2738   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
2739 </p></blockquote>
2740
2741 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2742
2743 <blockquote><p>
2744   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
2745   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
2746   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
2747   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
2748   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
2749   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
2750   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2751   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2752   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2753   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
2754   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
2755   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
2756   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
2757   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
2758   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
2759   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2760   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
2761   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
2762   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
2763   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
2764 </p></blockquote>
2765
2766 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2767
2768 <blockquote><p>
2769   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
2770   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
2771   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2772   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2773   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
2774   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
2775   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
2776   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2777   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2778   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2779   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2780   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
2781   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
2782   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
2783   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
2784   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
2785   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
2786   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
2787   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
2788   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
2789   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
2790 </p></blockquote>
2791
2792 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2793
2794 <blockquote><p>
2795   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
2796   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
2797   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
2798 </p></blockquote>
2799
2800 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
2801 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
2802 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
2803 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
2804 the difference somewhat.
2805
2806       </div>
2807       <div class="tags">
2808
2809
2810         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>.
2811
2812
2813       </div>
2814     </div>
2815     <div class="padding"></div>
2816
2817     <div class="entry">
2818       <div class="title">
2819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2820       </div>
2821       <div class="date">
2822         28th June 2010
2823       </div>
2824       <div class="body">
2825         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
2826 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
2827 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
2828 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
2829 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
2830 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
2831 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
2832 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
2833 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
2834 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
2835
2836 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
2837 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
2838 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
2839 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
2840 released.</p>
2841
2842 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
2843 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
2844 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
2845 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
2846
2847 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
2848 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2849
2850 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
2851 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
2852 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
2853 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
2854 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
2855
2856       </div>
2857       <div class="tags">
2858
2859
2860         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>.
2861
2862
2863       </div>
2864     </div>
2865     <div class="padding"></div>
2866
2867     <div class="entry">
2868       <div class="title">
2869         <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>
2870       </div>
2871       <div class="date">
2872         24th June 2010
2873       </div>
2874       <div class="body">
2875         <p>A while back, I
2876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
2877 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
2878 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
2879 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
2880
2881 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
2882 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
2883 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
2884 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
2885
2886 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
2887 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
2888 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
2889 Debian Edu.</p>
2890
2891 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
2892 the
2893 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
2894 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
2895 available today from IETF.</p>
2896
2897 <pre>
2898 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
2899 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
2900 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
2901  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
2902         NAME 'dhcpHost'
2903         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
2904 -       SUP top
2905 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
2906         MUST cn
2907         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
2908         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
2909 </pre>
2910
2911 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
2912 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
2913 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
2914
2915 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2916 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2917
2918       </div>
2919       <div class="tags">
2920
2921
2922         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>.
2923
2924
2925       </div>
2926     </div>
2927     <div class="padding"></div>
2928
2929     <div class="entry">
2930       <div class="title">
2931         <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>
2932       </div>
2933       <div class="date">
2934         16th June 2010
2935       </div>
2936       <div class="body">
2937         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
2938 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
2939 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
2940 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
2941 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
2942 this:
2943
2944 <blockquote><pre>
2945 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2946 tasksel --new-install
2947 </pre></blockquote>
2948
2949 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
2950 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
2951 any output what so ever.
2952
2953 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
2954 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
2955 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
2956 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
2957 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
2958 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
2959 code like this:
2960
2961 <blockquote><pre>
2962 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2963 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
2964 $cmd
2965 </pre></blockquote>
2966
2967 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
2968 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
2969 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
2970 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
2971 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
2972 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
2973 installation.</p>
2974
2975 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
2976 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
2977 like this.</p>
2978
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="tags">
2981
2982
2983         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>.
2984
2985
2986       </div>
2987     </div>
2988     <div class="padding"></div>
2989
2990     <div class="entry">
2991       <div class="title">
2992         <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>
2993       </div>
2994       <div class="date">
2995         13th June 2010
2996       </div>
2997       <div class="body">
2998         <p>My
2999 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
3000 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
3001 finally made the upgrade logs available from
3002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
3003 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
3004 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
3005 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
3006
3007 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
3008 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
3009 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
3010 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
3011 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
3012 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
3013 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
3014 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
3015
3016 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
3017 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
3018 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
3019 too surprising.</p>
3020
3021 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
3022 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
3023 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
3024 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
3025 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
3026 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
3027 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
3028 continue.</p>
3029
3030 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
3031 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
3032   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
3033   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
3034   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
3035   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
3036   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
3037   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3038   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3039   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3040   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3041   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3042   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3043   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3044   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3045   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3046   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3047   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3048   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3049   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3050   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3051   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3052   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3053   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3054   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3055   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3056   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3057   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3058   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
3059   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
3060
3061 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
3062
3063 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
3064   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
3065   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
3066   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
3067   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3068   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
3069   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
3070   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
3071   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
3072   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
3073   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3074   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
3075   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3076   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
3077   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
3078   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
3079   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
3080   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
3081   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
3082   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
3083   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
3084   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
3085   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
3086   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
3087   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3088   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
3089   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
3090   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
3091   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
3092   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3093   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3094   zip</p>
3095
3096 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
3097
3098 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
3099   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
3100   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
3101   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
3102   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
3103   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
3104   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3105   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3106   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3107   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3108   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3109   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3110   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3111   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3112   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3113   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3114   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3115   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3116   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3117   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3118   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3119   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3120   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3121   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3122   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3123   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3124   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3125   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
3126
3127 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
3128 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
3129   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3130   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
3131   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
3132   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3133   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
3134   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
3135   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3136   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
3137   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
3138   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
3139   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
3140   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
3141   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
3142   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
3143   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
3144   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3145   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3146   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3147   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
3148   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3149   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
3150   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
3151   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3152   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3153   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
3154   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
3155   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
3156   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
3157   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
3158   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
3159   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
3160   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
3161   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
3162   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3163   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3164   xulrunner-1.9</p>
3165
3166
3167       </div>
3168       <div class="tags">
3169
3170
3171         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>.
3172
3173
3174       </div>
3175     </div>
3176     <div class="padding"></div>
3177
3178     <div class="entry">
3179       <div class="title">
3180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
3181       </div>
3182       <div class="date">
3183         11th June 2010
3184       </div>
3185       <div class="body">
3186         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
3187 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
3188 have been discovered and reported in the process
3189 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
3190 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
3191 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
3192 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
3193 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
3194
3195 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
3196 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
3197 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
3198 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
3199 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
3200 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
3201
3202 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
3203 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
3204 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3205 is created.  The bug report
3206 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
3207 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
3208 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
3209 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
3210 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
3211 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
3212 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
3213 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
3214 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
3215 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
3216 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
3217 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
3218 Debian Squeeze.</p>
3219
3220 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
3221 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
3222 trick:</p>
3223
3224 <blockquote><pre>
3225 #!/bin/sh
3226 set -ex
3227
3228 if [ "$1" ] ; then
3229     desktop=$1
3230 else
3231     desktop=gnome
3232 fi
3233
3234 from=lenny
3235 to=squeeze
3236
3237 exec &lt; /dev/null
3238 unset LANG
3239 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
3240 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
3241 fuser -mv .
3242 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
3243 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3244 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
3245 #!/bin/sh
3246 exit 101
3247 EOF
3248 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
3249 exit_cleanup() {
3250     umount $tmpdir/proc
3251 }
3252 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
3253 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
3254 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
3255
3256 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
3257
3258 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
3259 # to return the correct answers.
3260 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
3261     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
3262
3263 # Include the desktop and laptop task
3264 for test in desktop laptop ; do
3265     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
3266 #!/bin/sh
3267 exit 2
3268 EOF
3269     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
3270 done
3271
3272 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3273 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
3274 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
3275 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
3276
3277 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
3278 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3279 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3280 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
3281 fuser -mv
3282 </pre></blockquote>
3283
3284 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
3285 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
3286 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
3287 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
3288 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
3289 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
3290
3291 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
3292 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
3293 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
3294 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
3295 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
3296 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
3297 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
3298
3299 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
3300 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
3301 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
3302 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
3303 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
3304 packages.</p>
3305
3306       </div>
3307       <div class="tags">
3308
3309
3310         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>.
3311
3312
3313       </div>
3314     </div>
3315     <div class="padding"></div>
3316
3317     <div class="entry">
3318       <div class="title">
3319         <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>
3320       </div>
3321       <div class="date">
3322          6th June 2010
3323       </div>
3324       <div class="body">
3325         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
3326 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
3327 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
3328 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
3329 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
3330 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
3331 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
3332
3333 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
3334 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
3335 COLUMNS):</p>
3336
3337 <blockquote><pre>
3338 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
3339 previous=N
3340 PREVLEVEL=
3341 RUNLEVEL=
3342 runlevel=S
3343 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
3344 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
3345 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
3346 </pre></blockquote>
3347
3348 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
3349 script.</p>
3350
3351 <blockquote><pre>
3352 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
3353 previous=N
3354 PREVLEVEL=N
3355 RUNLEVEL=S
3356 runlevel=S
3357 </pre></blockquote>
3358
3359 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
3360 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
3361 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
3362
3363 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
3364 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
3365 choice.</p>
3366
3367       </div>
3368       <div class="tags">
3369
3370
3371         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>.
3372
3373
3374       </div>
3375     </div>
3376     <div class="padding"></div>
3377
3378     <div class="entry">
3379       <div class="title">
3380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
3381       </div>
3382       <div class="date">
3383          6th June 2010
3384       </div>
3385       <div class="body">
3386         <p>Via the
3387 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
3388 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
3389 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
3390 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
3391 following the standards wars of today.</p>
3392
3393       </div>
3394       <div class="tags">
3395
3396
3397         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>.
3398
3399
3400       </div>
3401     </div>
3402     <div class="padding"></div>
3403
3404     <div class="entry">
3405       <div class="title">
3406         <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>
3407       </div>
3408       <div class="date">
3409          3rd June 2010
3410       </div>
3411       <div class="body">
3412         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
3413 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
3414 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
3415 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
3416 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
3417
3418 <blockquote><pre>
3419 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
3420   vendor                    count
3421   Dell Computer Corporation     1
3422     PowerEdge 1750              1
3423   IBM                           1
3424     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
3425   Intel                         2
3426   [no-dmi-info]                 3
3427 maintainer:~#
3428 </pre></blockquote>
3429
3430 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
3431 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
3432 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
3433 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
3434 option to list the individual machines.</p>
3435
3436 <p>A larger list is
3437 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
3438 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
3439 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
3440 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
3441 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
3442 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
3443 collector.</p>
3444
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="tags">
3447
3448
3449         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>.
3450
3451
3452       </div>
3453     </div>
3454     <div class="padding"></div>
3455
3456     <div class="entry">
3457       <div class="title">
3458         <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>
3459       </div>
3460       <div class="date">
3461          1st June 2010
3462       </div>
3463       <div class="body">
3464         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
3465 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
3466 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
3467 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
3468 wait.</p>
3469
3470 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
3471 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
3472 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
3473 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
3474 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
3475 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
3476
3477 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
3478 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
3479 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
3480 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
3481 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
3482 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
3483 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
3484 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
3485
3486 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
3487
3488       </div>
3489       <div class="tags">
3490
3491
3492         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>.
3493
3494
3495       </div>
3496     </div>
3497     <div class="padding"></div>
3498
3499     <div class="entry">
3500       <div class="title">
3501         <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>
3502       </div>
3503       <div class="date">
3504         27th May 2010
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="body">
3507         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
3508 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
3509 issues are known and should be solved:
3510
3511 <p><ul>
3512
3513 <li>The wicd package seen to
3514 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
3515 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
3516 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
3517 seem to be on the case.</li>
3518
3519 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
3520 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
3521 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
3522 maintainer is on the case.</li>
3523
3524 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
3525 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
3526 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
3527 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
3528 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
3529 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
3530 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
3531 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
3532
3533 </ul></p>
3534
3535 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
3536 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
3537 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
3538 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
3539
3540 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3541 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3542 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3543 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3544
3545 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
3546
3547       </div>
3548       <div class="tags">
3549
3550
3551         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>.
3552
3553
3554       </div>
3555     </div>
3556     <div class="padding"></div>
3557
3558     <div class="entry">
3559       <div class="title">
3560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
3561       </div>
3562       <div class="date">
3563         22nd May 2010
3564       </div>
3565       <div class="body">
3566         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
3567 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
3568 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
3569 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
3570
3571 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
3572 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
3573 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
3574 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
3575 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
3576 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
3577 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
3578 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
3579 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
3580 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
3581 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
3582 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
3583 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
3584 going to work.</p>
3585
3586 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
3587 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
3588 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
3589 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
3590 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
3591 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
3592 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
3593 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
3594 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
3595 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
3596 Edu.</p>
3597
3598 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
3599 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
3600 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
3601 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
3602 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
3603 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
3604
3605 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
3606 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
3607
3608       </div>
3609       <div class="tags">
3610
3611
3612         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>.
3613
3614
3615       </div>
3616     </div>
3617     <div class="padding"></div>
3618
3619     <div class="entry">
3620       <div class="title">
3621         <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>
3622       </div>
3623       <div class="date">
3624         14th May 2010
3625       </div>
3626       <div class="body">
3627         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
3628 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
3629 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
3630 expected, if I am to believe the
3631 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3632 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
3633 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
3634 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
3635 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
3636 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
3637 version.</p>
3638
3639 More information about
3640 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3641 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
3642 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
3643 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
3644
3645 <blockquote><pre>
3646 CONCURRENCY=none
3647 </pre></blockquote>
3648
3649 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3650 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3651 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3652 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3653
3654       </div>
3655       <div class="tags">
3656
3657
3658         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>.
3659
3660
3661       </div>
3662     </div>
3663     <div class="padding"></div>
3664
3665     <div class="entry">
3666       <div class="title">
3667         <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>
3668       </div>
3669       <div class="date">
3670         14th May 2010
3671       </div>
3672       <div class="body">
3673         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
3674 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
3675 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
3676 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
3677 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
3678 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
3679 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
3680 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
3681
3682 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
3683 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
3684 this on the collector host:</p>
3685
3686 <blockquote><pre>
3687 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
3688 </pre></blockquote>
3689
3690 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
3691 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
3692
3693 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
3694 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
3695 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
3696 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
3697 written yet.</p>
3698
3699       </div>
3700       <div class="tags">
3701
3702
3703         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>.
3704
3705
3706       </div>
3707     </div>
3708     <div class="padding"></div>
3709
3710     <div class="entry">
3711       <div class="title">
3712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
3713       </div>
3714       <div class="date">
3715         13th May 2010
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="body">
3718         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
3719 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
3720 has been
3721 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
3722
3723 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
3724 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
3725 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
3726 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
3727 based boot system.  Tollef is
3728 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
3729 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
3730 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
3731 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
3732 at the moment do not.</p>
3733
3734 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
3735 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
3736 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
3737 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
3738 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
3739 way forward.</p>
3740
3741 <p>In the mean time, based on the
3742 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3743 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
3744 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
3745 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
3746 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
3747 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
3748 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
3749 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
3750
3751       </div>
3752       <div class="tags">
3753
3754
3755         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>.
3756
3757
3758       </div>
3759     </div>
3760     <div class="padding"></div>
3761
3762     <div class="entry">
3763       <div class="title">
3764         <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>
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="date">
3767          6th May 2010
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="body">
3770         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
3771 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
3772 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
3773 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
3774 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3775 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
3776 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
3777
3778 <blockquote><pre>
3779 CONCURRENCY=makefile
3780 </pre></blockquote>
3781
3782 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
3783 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
3784 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
3785 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
3786 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
3787 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
3788 make this happen.</p>
3789
3790 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
3791 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
3792 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
3793 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
3794 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
3795
3796 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
3797 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
3798 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
3799 fix the remaining issues.</p>
3800
3801 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3802 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3803 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3804 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3805
3806       </div>
3807       <div class="tags">
3808
3809
3810         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>.
3811
3812
3813       </div>
3814     </div>
3815     <div class="padding"></div>
3816
3817     <div class="entry">
3818       <div class="title">
3819         <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>
3820       </div>
3821       <div class="date">
3822         27th July 2009
3823       </div>
3824       <div class="body">
3825         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
3826 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
3827 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
3828 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
3829 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
3830 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
3831 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
3832
3833 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
3834 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
3835 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
3836
3837       </div>
3838       <div class="tags">
3839
3840
3841         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>.
3842
3843
3844       </div>
3845     </div>
3846     <div class="padding"></div>
3847
3848     <div class="entry">
3849       <div class="title">
3850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
3851       </div>
3852       <div class="date">
3853         22nd July 2009
3854       </div>
3855       <div class="body">
3856         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
3857 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
3858 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
3859 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
3860 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
3861 the package up to date.</p>
3862
3863 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
3864 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
3865 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
3866 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
3867 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
3868 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
3869 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
3870 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
3871 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
3872 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
3873 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
3874 working on the future release.</p>
3875
3876 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
3877 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
3878
3879       </div>
3880       <div class="tags">
3881
3882
3883         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>.
3884
3885
3886       </div>
3887     </div>
3888     <div class="padding"></div>
3889
3890     <div class="entry">
3891       <div class="title">
3892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
3893       </div>
3894       <div class="date">
3895         24th June 2009
3896       </div>
3897       <div class="body">
3898         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
3899 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
3900 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
3901 funded
3902 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
3903 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
3904 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
3905 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
3906 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
3907 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
3908
3909 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
3910 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
3911 boot:</p>
3912
3913 <ul>
3914
3915 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
3916
3917 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
3918    clock is in UTC.</li>
3919
3920 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
3921    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3922    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
3923
3924 </ul>
3925
3926 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
3927 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
3928 Villegas</a>.
3929
3930 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
3931 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
3932 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
3933 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
3934 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
3935 using this.</p>
3936
3937 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
3938 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
3939 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
3940 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
3941 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
3942 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
3943 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
3944
3945       </div>
3946       <div class="tags">
3947
3948
3949         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>.
3950
3951
3952       </div>
3953     </div>
3954     <div class="padding"></div>
3955
3956     <div class="entry">
3957       <div class="title">
3958         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
3959       </div>
3960       <div class="date">
3961         17th May 2009
3962       </div>
3963       <div class="body">
3964         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
3965 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
3966 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
3967 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
3968 dager siden kom
3969 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
3970 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
3971 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
3972 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
3973 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
3974
3975 <blockquote>
3976 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
3977 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
3978 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
3979 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
3980 </blockquote>
3981
3982 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
3983 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
3984 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
3985 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
3986 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
3987
3988 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
3989 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
3990 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
3991
3992       </div>
3993       <div class="tags">
3994
3995
3996         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
3997
3998
3999       </div>
4000     </div>
4001     <div class="padding"></div>
4002
4003     <div class="entry">
4004       <div class="title">
4005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
4006       </div>
4007       <div class="date">
4008          7th May 2009
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="body">
4011         <p>Kom over
4012 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
4013 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
4014 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
4015 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
4016 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
4017 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
4018 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
4019
4020       </div>
4021       <div class="tags">
4022
4023
4024         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4025
4026
4027       </div>
4028     </div>
4029     <div class="padding"></div>
4030
4031     <div class="entry">
4032       <div class="title">
4033         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
4034       </div>
4035       <div class="date">
4036          2nd May 2009
4037       </div>
4038       <div class="body">
4039         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
4040 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
4041 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
4042 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
4043 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
4044 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
4045 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
4046 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
4047 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
4048 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
4049 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
4050 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
4051 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
4052 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
4053 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
4054 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
4055 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
4056 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
4057 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
4058 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
4059
4060 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
4061 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
4062 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
4063 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
4064 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
4065 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
4066 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
4067 betydelige.</p>
4068
4069       </div>
4070       <div class="tags">
4071
4072
4073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4074
4075
4076       </div>
4077     </div>
4078     <div class="padding"></div>
4079
4080     <div class="entry">
4081       <div class="title">
4082         <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>
4083       </div>
4084       <div class="date">
4085          2nd May 2009
4086       </div>
4087       <div class="body">
4088         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
4089 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
4090 do not yet know them.</p>
4091
4092 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
4093 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
4094 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
4095 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
4096 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
4097 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
4098 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
4099 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
4100 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
4101 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
4102 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
4103
4104 <p>The second one is
4105 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
4106 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
4107 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
4108 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
4109 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
4110 and the company behind it is running
4111 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
4112 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
4113 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
4114 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
4115 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
4116 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
4117 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
4118 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
4119
4120 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
4121 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
4122 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
4123 surrounded by today.</p>
4124
4125       </div>
4126       <div class="tags">
4127
4128
4129         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>.
4130
4131
4132       </div>
4133     </div>
4134     <div class="padding"></div>
4135
4136     <div class="entry">
4137       <div class="title">
4138         <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>
4139       </div>
4140       <div class="date">
4141         28th April 2009
4142       </div>
4143       <div class="body">
4144         <p>Julien Blache
4145 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
4146 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
4147 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
4148 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
4149 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
4150 properties.</p>
4151
4152       </div>
4153       <div class="tags">
4154
4155
4156         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>.
4157
4158
4159       </div>
4160     </div>
4161     <div class="padding"></div>
4162
4163     <div class="entry">
4164       <div class="title">
4165         <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>
4166       </div>
4167       <div class="date">
4168         30th March 2009
4169       </div>
4170       <div class="body">
4171         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
4172 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
4173 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
4174 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
4175 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
4176 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
4177 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
4178 application.</p>
4179
4180 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
4181 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
4182 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
4183 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
4184 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
4185 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
4186 blocked from doing so.</p>
4187
4188 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
4189 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
4190 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
4191 requirements change.</p>
4192
4193 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
4194 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
4195 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
4196
4197       </div>
4198       <div class="tags">
4199
4200
4201         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>.
4202
4203
4204       </div>
4205     </div>
4206     <div class="padding"></div>
4207
4208     <div class="entry">
4209       <div class="title">
4210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
4211       </div>
4212       <div class="date">
4213         29th March 2009
4214       </div>
4215       <div class="body">
4216         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
4217 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
4218 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
4219 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
4220 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
4221 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
4222 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
4223 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
4224 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
4225 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
4226 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
4227 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
4228 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
4229 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
4230 now. :)</p>
4231
4232       </div>
4233       <div class="tags">
4234
4235
4236         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>.
4237
4238
4239       </div>
4240     </div>
4241     <div class="padding"></div>
4242
4243     <div class="entry">
4244       <div class="title">
4245         <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>
4246       </div>
4247       <div class="date">
4248         29th March 2009
4249       </div>
4250       <div class="body">
4251         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
4252 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
4253 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
4254 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
4255 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
4256 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
4257
4258 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
4259 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
4260 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
4261 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
4262 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
4263 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
4264 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
4265 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
4266 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
4267 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
4268 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
4269 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
4270 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
4271
4272 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
4273 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
4274 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
4275 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
4276
4277 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
4278 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
4279
4280 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
4281 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
4282 new IETF work group?</p>
4283
4284       </div>
4285       <div class="tags">
4286
4287
4288         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>.
4289
4290
4291       </div>
4292     </div>
4293     <div class="padding"></div>
4294
4295     <div class="entry">
4296       <div class="title">
4297         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
4298       </div>
4299       <div class="date">
4300         15th February 2009
4301       </div>
4302       <div class="body">
4303         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
4304 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
4305 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
4306 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
4307 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
4308 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
4309 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
4310 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
4311 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
4312 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
4313 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
4314 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
4315
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="tags">
4318
4319
4320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4321
4322
4323       </div>
4324     </div>
4325     <div class="padding"></div>
4326
4327     <div class="entry">
4328       <div class="title">
4329         <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>
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="date">
4332          7th December 2008
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="body">
4335         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
4336 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
4337 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
4338 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
4339 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
4340 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
4341 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
4342 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
4343
4344 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
4345 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
4346 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
4347 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
4348 of these cards.</p>
4349
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="tags">
4352
4353
4354         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>.
4355
4356
4357       </div>
4358     </div>
4359     <div class="padding"></div>
4360
4361     <div class="entry">
4362       <div class="title">
4363         <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>
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="date">
4366         25th November 2008
4367       </div>
4368       <div class="body">
4369         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
4370 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
4371 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
4372 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
4373 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
4374 notes are available on
4375 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
4376 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
4377 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
4378 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
4379 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
4380 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
4381 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
4382 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
4383 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
4384
4385 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
4386 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
4387
4388       </div>
4389       <div class="tags">
4390
4391
4392         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>.
4393
4394
4395       </div>
4396     </div>
4397     <div class="padding"></div>
4398
4399     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
4400     <div id="sidebar">
4401
4402
4403
4404 <h2>Archive</h2>
4405 <ul>
4406
4407 <li>2012
4408 <ul>
4409
4410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
4411
4412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
4413
4414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
4415
4416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
4417
4418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
4419
4420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
4421
4422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
4423
4424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4425
4426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
4427
4428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
4429
4430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
4431
4432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (2)</a></li>
4433
4434 </ul></li>
4435
4436 <li>2011
4437 <ul>
4438
4439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
4440
4441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
4442
4443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
4444
4445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
4446
4447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
4448
4449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
4450
4451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
4452
4453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4454
4455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
4456
4457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4458
4459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4460
4461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
4462
4463 </ul></li>
4464
4465 <li>2010
4466 <ul>
4467
4468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
4469
4470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
4471
4472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
4473
4474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
4475
4476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4477
4478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
4479
4480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
4481
4482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
4483
4484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
4485
4486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
4487
4488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
4489
4490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
4491
4492 </ul></li>
4493
4494 <li>2009
4495 <ul>
4496
4497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
4498
4499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
4500
4501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
4502
4503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
4504
4505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4506
4507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
4508
4509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
4510
4511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
4512
4513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
4514
4515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4516
4517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4518
4519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
4520
4521 </ul></li>
4522
4523 <li>2008
4524 <ul>
4525
4526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
4527
4528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
4529
4530 </ul></li>
4531
4532 </ul>
4533
4534
4535
4536 <h2>Tags</h2>
4537 <ul>
4538
4539  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
4540
4541  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
4542
4543  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
4544
4545  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (3)</a></li>
4546
4547  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (3)</a></li>
4548
4549  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
4550
4551  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
4552
4553  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
4554
4555  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (116)</a></li>
4556
4557  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
4558
4559  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
4560
4561  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
4562
4563  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (161)</a></li>
4564
4565  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
4566
4567  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
4568
4569  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (9)</a></li>
4570
4571  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
4572
4573  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
4574
4575  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
4576
4577  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
4578
4579  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (5)</a></li>
4580
4581  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
4582
4583  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
4584
4585  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (217)</a></li>
4586
4587  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (147)</a></li>
4588
4589  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
4590
4591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
4592
4593  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (39)</a></li>
4594
4595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (60)</a></li>
4596
4597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
4598
4599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
4600
4601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
4602
4603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
4604
4605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
4606
4607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
4608
4609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
4610
4611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
4612
4613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
4614
4615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
4616
4617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
4618
4619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
4620
4621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
4622
4623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
4624
4625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
4626
4627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
4628
4629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
4630
4631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
4632
4633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
4634
4635 </ul>
4636
4637
4638     </div>
4639     <p style="text-align: right">
4640  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
4641 </p>
4642
4643   </body>
4644 </html>